He noticed.
Cat Zakrzewski, Sarah Ellison and Michael Birnbaum at WP:
Cat Zakrzewski, Sarah Ellison and Michael Birnbaum at WP:
President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal aid from California as it works to recover from devastating wildfires, recycling several baseless claims and attacks against California’s Democratic leaders during his first sit-down interview since his inauguration.
“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down,” he told Sean Hannity during a Fox News interview that aired Wednesday night.
Trump was repeating a false claim he has repeatedly made that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and other public officials have refused to allow water from the northern part of the state to flow down into the Los Angeles area.
Withholding aid, or making it conditional, would be a significant change in standard practice for how the government responds to natural disasters. Recent hurricane funding for mostly GOP-led states passed Congress without conditions.
Los Angeles does not get its water from the Northern California systems Trump described, and water experts have repeatedly explained that the scale and severity of the Southern California fires was not caused by empty reservoirs or a lack of water flowing from Northern California.
