The former President’s plan to bring water to the California desert is, like a lot of his promises, a goofy pipe-dream.
In an apparent effort to address the pressing issue of California water shortages, Trump said the following: “You have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north with the snow caps and Canada, and all pouring down and they have essentially a very large faucet. You turn the faucet and it takes one day to turn it, and it’s massive, it’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you. You turn that, and all of that water aimlessly goes into the Pacific (Ocean), and if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles,” he said.
Amidst his weird, almost poetic rambling, the “very large faucet” Trump seems to have been referring to is the Columbia River. The Columbia runs from a lake in British Columbia, down through Oregon and eventually ends up in the Pacific Ocean. Trump’s apparent plan is to somehow divert water from the Columbia and get it all the way down to Los Angeles. However, scientific experts who have spoken to the press have noted that not only is there currently no way to divert the water from the Oregon River to southern California, but creating such a system would likely be prohibitively expensive and inefficient.
Amidst his weird, almost poetic rambling, the “very large faucet” Trump seems to have been referring to is the Columbia River. The Columbia runs from a lake in British Columbia, down through Oregon and eventually ends up in the Pacific Ocean. Trump’s apparent plan is to somehow divert water from the Columbia and get it all the way down to Los Angeles. However, scientific experts who have spoken to the press have noted that not only is there currently no way to divert the water from the Oregon River to southern California, but creating such a system would likely be prohibitively expensive and inefficient.
The fucking sane-washing continues. He’s not being poetic. He’s not laying out an “apparent plan” that we need to vet with “scientific experts”. He thinks there’s literally a fucking big faucet up there already as big as a building that “takes a day to turn” and he’s the only person smart enough to think of “turning the faucet” or the only one strong-willed enough to kill the smelt for the good of the forests or whatever.
People keep grafting actual concepts onto this absolute moron’s imbecilic utterances and giving him a leg to stand on…just fucking quote the asshole and move on with your day.
The ag lobby told him there’s an ocean of fresh water, and the only thing stopping it is all the evil librul greens demanding they protect the mosquitos or something.
The farmers in the central valley believe the same thing, they get 80% of California’s water and still fervently believe we’re all holding out on them and there’s a lake superior we’ve been hiding behind our backs all along out of spite.
The ag lobby told him there’s an ocean of fresh water
I’d say that he just says whatever. If it’ll get him more popular and/or more money then there’s no need to figure out if he actually believes something or not. It usually is self serving in some way, truth doesn’t matter.
I mean, I was vomiting in stanzas when I read this…
Iamblech pentameter
Yeah, but does he have concepts of a plan?
This isn’t an idea, or even a promise. Trump thinks that there currently exists a faucet that could divert the Columbia River, a river he does not know exists and would probably think is in Mexico somehow, and that the faucet is purposefully moving water to the ocean as a way to spite the residents of California going through a water crisis. His only promise is that he would turn said faucet to eliminate the water crisis. Why are journalists ascribing so much intelligence to someone who has consistently bragged that he thinks at an 8-year old level?
There’s a flood control gate somewhere around Vancouver, is that what he’s talking about? It’s a bit bigger than any wall though…
No, he is talking about a faucet because he doesn’t understand any of it. There is no faucet. He’s dumb. Move on.
Even if he was, that’s not how that works. I’m not saying he’s smart I’m just trying to figure out what he’s going to do so I can be somewhat prepared.
He does this shit all the time. He will greatly exaggerate something then the media blows it up and then his press people redress it with some story tangentially related. Don’t feed into it. It’s a cheap, gotcha.
He is dumb. Let him sound dumb.
We need to get a portal to the good timeline and shove him through.
I imagine step 1 would be planning a route for all the water. Step 2, purchasing all of the land along said route. Step 3, realizing it costs a shit ton as it is 2000km/1200 miles from Vancouver to Los Angeles, note you will also have to pay reperations to both Canadians and Americans not along the route effected to the west… Step 4. Plan the the infrastructure. Step 5, realize this was all supposed to be done in a day… Step 6 realize both Biden and Trump are long dead from old age. Step 7 remember California will move as the plates on the earth move, so the pipe needs to be flexible, get a new quote at 100x the gdp of many countries.
Start the project.
Yes, clearly he means demolishing Bonneville Dam, somehow reversing the flow of the Willamette and then digging a trench through Grants Pass, where, if we flood the San Joaquin Valley will provide plenty of water to LA.
See, that’s the kind of really dumb thing I would expect him to do.
I really tried to give the benefit of the doubt in interpreting the dumb shit he said, but there just is no version of his idiot ramblings that actually makes sense.
No, it’s perfectly feasible: the water’s on top of the map, the desert at the bottom. Now, naysayers may interject that there are thousands of miles of distance and elevation and mountains and whatnot in between, but I bet our genius Trump already has the solution: pick up the map, tilt it and draw an arrow with a sharpie so that the water knows where exactly to flow.
Take that, “scientists”!
He’s a 10 year old child that likes to make pretend without ever having to face any consequences should his little fantasies ever come true.
That’s our job. We’re the ones that face the consequences.
What a fucking idiot. The only dumber people are those that believe him.
Trump lives in some sort of reality pastiche of Richard Scary and Marquis de Sade.
I wish he would be in prison as frequently as the Marquis was. Both violent rapists though, so that tracks.
I know this is the politics community so forgive me for saying “this comment aside,” but we really need to figure out a cheaper and cleaner way to desalinate seawater.
This is a nonstarter because there is a quarter pound of salt in every gallon of salt water. A small town of 50k would easily produce close to a million pounds of salt a day. Now try to scale that up to 20 million people in LA for instance.
Just put it in Utah.
We need to stop encouraging people to live where there isn’t any water. There’s a reason nearly 3/4 of the US population lives east of the Mississippi, and that reason is the Eastern half of the country gets a straight up order of magnitude more rain water than the Western half
Solar desalination is very viable. It’s just that water is so cheap at the moment that it’s not worth the investment.
Dimbulb donnie is just everyone’s Crazy Uncle Liberty, and it’s been Thanksgiving since about 2015.
The PNW isn’t immune to the drought pal.
Without the Columbia, the Idaho port city of Lewiston is doomed. Just in case anyone needed a silver lining.
As an Oregonian, I have no idea what faucet he’s talking about.
Bonneville Dam maybe? 🤔
Someone on Reddit theorized that he saw the term Delta and associated it with Delta Faucets the company, and that is where the faucet idea of his comes from.
No it’s the faucet across from the toilet he has to flush ten, sometimes fifteen times, which is also where he got this idea.
It’s the faucet he read about on truth social, which means it’s real. There was even a picture of the faucet, and we all know those can’t be faked. /s
Uhm.
Ok. He should not be in charge of the executive office. We know he’s stupid but, damn.
promisesDeranged ramblings
The Columbia runs from a lake in British Columbia, down through Oregon and eventually ends up in the Pacific Ocean.
The Columbia does not run through Oregon, it is the northern border of it from just south of Kennewick, Washington to the Pacific Ocean. The only US state that the Columbia actually flows through is Washington, which makes sense since the river starts in Canada, which is north of Washington, which is north of Oregon. Odd choice of verbiage.
The Columbia is the border between Washington and Oregon. Cross a bridge between the two states and you will see a welcome to Oregon/welcome to Washington sign in the middle of the bridge.
Yes, I know. As I said, it’s the northern border of the state between the Pacific and just south of Kennewick, Washington. But it does not flow through Oregon, as only the south bank is ever on Oregon land.
The Columbia enters Washington from the north and then becomes its southern border all the way to the ocean. Being entirely surrounded by Washington for part of its course, it is accurate to say that the Columbia flows through Washington. Since the Columbia only interacts with Oregon as its northern border, beginning and ending its interaction on the same side of the state, it can not be said to flow through Oregon.
But wait! What about Sauvie Island and the Columbia slough? Are those not examples of the Columbia flowing through Oregon? Yeah, but not on the same scale and there’s nothing on Sauvie Island except for corn mazes and naked people.
But it does not flow through Oregon, as only the south bank is ever on Oregon land.
We’re just arguing semantics, then.
So it would seem.
When you take a shower does the shower flow through you or along your edges?
I’m not sure I would say that my body really has “edges”…
We had this bullshit in Arizona too. The state GOP is convinced that Flagstaff is hoarding water somehow. That if Flagstaff just stopped hoarding water then Sedona wouldn’t have any trouble. For the uninitiated, Flagstaff has what rains and that’s it. It’s as water stressed as the rest of the state because people won’t stop moving there.
