President Donald Trump went off the rails when asked about California wildfires during his first full day in office. He claims city officials are diverting "limitless" water to the ocean through a "massive valve."
    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 days ago

      Don’t worry. I hear Trump is transferring funds to unimportant things like the Center for Disease Control and WIC in order to start his new Federal Forest Raking Program.

    • TommySoda@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 days ago

      Alright, then how about you go rake the leaves of the national forest and parks behind my house? You got this. Should be pretty easy from what you’re saying.

    • Rooskie91@discuss.online
      0·
      9 days ago

      What do you get out of this? Are you some kind of abused dog that accepts negative attention likes its positive attention because it’s never received positive attention? Go to therapy, please, for yourself if no one else.

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        He’s alluding to a previous comment during Trump’s first term during earlier California wildfires about how Finland raked their forests.

        https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46256296

        Citing a conversation with his Finnish counterpart, Mr Trump said they spend “a lot of time on raking and cleaning”.

        But President Sauli Niinisto told a Finnish daily he could not remember talking about raking when the two met.

        Firefighters in California are currently battling the deadliest blaze in the state’s history.

        Surveying the damage on Saturday, Mr Trump revisited his claim that poor forest management was to blame.

        “You look at other countries where they do it differently, and it’s a whole different story,” he said.

        “I was with the president of Finland, and he said: ‘We have a much different [sic]…, we’re a forest nation.’ And they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don’t have any problem,” he added.

          • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
            0·
            7 days ago

            I got it instantly, and I cracked a smile

            Honestly, people are just scared and looking for a fight. And I mean…shit is fucked. Still sucks that people on lemmy seem to have stopped trying to understand though, things have not been the same here in the last few months

            Anyways, /s kills any humor in the joke, I appreciated a little reminder of the absurdity of this timeline. Humor is how we keep it together when everything is on fire

            • nomy@lemmy.zipEnglish
              0·
              7 days ago

              Lemmy is full of people who’re looking for an argument or some way to feel smug and superior. All the “well, ackshually” big brains moved over here and it’s exhausting.

              • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
                0·
                7 days ago

                Nah, I pick my words carefully, and usually have a mountain of science behind them

                For example, I said 4/5 of RFK’s opinions are actually pretty good, but the 5th is so insane it puts the last 4 into doubt.

                Someone calls me out on “they want to put AuDHD people into camps”. I say I’m one of them, and being able to voluntary get out of the modern world for as long as you need is a safety net that would save so many lives

                They asked if I had a PhD, so I hit them with the science - behavioral activation, getting away from your stressors, and getting away from modern life (because we’re not crazy, the modern human world is what’s crazy) is the most effective treatment for most mental illness. And I went on to list my concerns about implementation, and how this great idea could easily become a work camp if it’s not as voluntary as advertised

                They hit me with “that’s some pull yourself up by your bootstraps shit”

                That’s what lemmy has been like. It’s not “um actually”, it’s “if I totally breeze through what you said in the most uncharitable way, I can interpret this as you said something horrible”

          • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            9 days ago

            Whenever you omit a /s you take a risk.

            Especially given Lemmy’s substantial nuerodivergent population clear markers of sarcasm are always a good idea.

  • ryannathans@aussie.zone
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    9 days ago

    This follows on from previous posts https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-misinformation-about-the-los-angeles-wildfires-and-california-water-policy

    Trump, in a Jan. 8 Truth Social post, blamed Newsom’s management for the water issues, and said Newsom had refused to allow “beautiful, clean, fresh water to flow into California.”

    “Governor Gavin (Newsom) refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump said. “He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid.”

    Trump’s posts seemed to blame the water constraints on statewide water management plans that capture rain and snow as it flows from Northern California. But experts said those plans would not have affected the fire response.

    Southern California has plenty of water stored, said Mark Gold, the water scarcity solutions director at the Natural Resources Defense Council and a Southern California Metropolitan Water District board member.

      • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
        0·
        7 days ago

        It’s fucking wild how closely this skews with Revelation. The Beast and the Antichrist were two different people. The Beast distracted while the Antichrist ruled.

  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    this is America.

    a zombie state that doesn’t realize it’s already dead.

    and nobody is willing to do what must be done to stop it.

  • return2ozma@lemmy.worldOP
    0·
    9 days ago

    He claimed Los Angeles limits residents to just 38 gallons of water a day, and referred to some mythical “valve” that could bring limitless water to L.A., but that officials instead diverted to the ocean.

    “They have a valve, think of a sink but multiply it by many thousands of times the size of it, it’s massive. And you turn it back toward Los Angeles. Why aren’t they doing it? They either have a death wish, they’re stupid or there’s something else going on that we don’t understand,” Trump said.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
      0·
      9 days ago

      or there’s something else going on that we I don’t understand," Trump said.

      He was so close to realization.

    • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 days ago

      Stupid does apply here, just not in the way he thinks it does. Also, who is “they”? Is he just referring to liberals?

      • ramble81@lemm.ee
        0·
        9 days ago

        I hate “they”. Whenever someone at work says “they” I immediately ask “who?” and don’t get off of it until they actually name a person. Does wonders for stopping the random boogeyman.

    • minnow@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 days ago

      They either have a death wish, they’re stupid or there’s something else

      You know what they say. Everything that comes out of their mouths is either a confession or projection!

    • Mac@mander.xyzEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      Maybe hes thinking of the fact that ~80% of California’s water goes to irrigation for crops instead of to communities.

      • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        9 days ago

        Tbf, the crops come to our communities. We love our fresh California produce. It sparks joy.

        And the Palisades had enough water to drink and fill pools and grow landscape plants, and several people were hosing down their homes (a few died with hose in hand because the fire was way too strong for that and they should have evacuated but a lot of the rest of us made stupid decisions in the moment that just didn’t turn out as deadly.) but the real problem was that wind. They couldn’t do airdrops, the conflagration was too powerful. There was a problem with the hydrants, but honestly even if they’d been fully functioning it’s not clear if much more could have been saved. Altadena had plenty of water too, with working hydrants, but that maelstrom of fire was just crazy, man.

        • Pieisawesome@lemmy.world
          0·
          7 days ago

          The problem with the hydrants is they used 9 million gallons of water, which was their entire reservoir (3 3 million gallon tanks in surrounding hills for water pressure).

          To feed hydrants you need massive quantities of water in a higher place for pressure.

          The state is investigating why they couldn’t keep up, but I think it’s as simple as the system wasn’t built to refill their reservoirs fast enough

  • spike4379@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 days ago

    This guys a massive regard. Sad that I moved to lemmy because mods on reddit were oversensitive but the same thing is here lmao