View source for Donald Trump/claims/CA wildfires

[[category:US/CA]]
==2025-01-08 Sat==
===Claims===
At '''11:40''', Trump [[Truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113793724958051185|claimed]] that:
* CA Governor {{l/same|Gavin Newsom}} refused to sign a "{{l/same|water restoration declaration}}" that was submitted to him.
* The water deficit is so severe that there is "no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes."

At '''14:25''', Trump [[Truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113794373085936970|reiterated]] the fire hydrants claim, and added a claim that there is "no money in {{l/sub|pfx=US/gov/|FEMA}}".
===Reality===
* There was no "{{l/same|water restoration declaration}}".
* FEMA is adequately funded for now, due in part to Biden's efforts; see {{l/same|FEMA funding}}.
* There was plenty of water, including for firefighting needs. That was never the problem.
==2025-01-28 Fri==
===Claims===
Trump [[Truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113904028349476462|claimed]] that:
* the US military has "turned on the water" to California
* ...giving it access to a supply "flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond"...
* ... presumably via some pipeline which he believes exists and had been turned off. 

In that same post, he also implies that :
* The fact of this water-supply having been turned off is what created California's environmental crisis.
* Having restored the supply has ended that crisis.
* The crisis was fake because the water could have been turned back on at any time.
* The water was turned off as a political stunt by environmentalists.

He never mentions the connection, but anyone who has been following the news might have assumed that the military was acting on [[US/president/EO/2025/01/24/3|his orders]] of 4 days earlier and that therefore Trump essentially put out the wildfires ''and'' fixed a politically-engineered environmental crisis with a stroke of the pen.

The claim was reiterated in a [https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/01/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karoline-leavitt/ White House press briefing] on January 28 ([https://perma.cc/T4FJ-RQEB archive]).
===Reality===
* There is no such pipeline.
* No water supply to California was ever "turned off".
* The military did not "restore water" to California.
* The military did not even ''enter'' California. ([https://archive.ph/feUKl CA DWR])
* All of the claims in his post are therefore completely false and ridiculous.
===Follow-up===
* '''2025-01-28'''
** '''06:35''' (@[[X-Twitter]]): The post was reshared approvingly in a [https://archive.ph/d4k6k pinned post] by user @AwakenedOutlaw, who amplified a bit on the "fake crisis" theme by stating that this action is "exposing the grand deception of drought".
** '''09:19''' (@[[X-Twitter]]): The [[US/gov/DoGE|Department of Governmental Efficiency]] [https://x.com/DOGE/status/1884245022041858392 posted] congratulations to the administration and the {{l/sub|pfx=US/gov/|DOI}} {{fmt/quote|for more than doubling the Federally pumped water flowing toward Southern California in &lt; 72 hours.}}
==News==
{{links/smw}}