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“We’re going to solve your water problem — you have a water problem that is so insane, it is so ridiculous, where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea. And I just met with a lot of the farmers who are great people, and they’re saying, we don’t even understand it. … They have farms up here, and they don’t get water. I said, ‘Oh, that’s too bad. Is it a drought?’ ‘No, we have plenty of water. … We shove it out to sea.’ … The environmentalists don’t know why. They’re trying to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.”
— Donald Trump, then a candidate for president, at a campaign rally in Fresno, California, on May 27, 2016
“As you probably heard, I released billions of gallons of water going in from upstate California from the most northern parts of California, probably comes in from Canada to a certain extent. Thank you very much, Canada, we appreciate it. … They had all that water pouring out right into the Pacific. They had a big valve, like a giant valve as big as this room and they turned the valve, takes one day to turn it, and they face it toward the Pacific Ocean and the water, all that was coming down, all millions and millions of gallons coming down. They put it into the Pacific Ocean, which for the Pacific Ocean is like a drop of water. But for California, it would have been unbelievable. So, we did it. I’m very proud of the fact that we did it. We did that against a lot of heat and a lot of environmental nonsense.”
— President Trump, remarks while signing executive orders, April 8, 2025
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This is the story of how, under Trump, a falsehood with a kernel of truth becomes ever grander — and eventually becomes ineffective policy.
California water policy is notoriously complicated. At its core, it involves a constant battle between cities and farms, each side wanting more. A politically connected group of Central Valley farmers gave Trump their version of the truth during a meeting in 2016, and he has hung on to that tale ever since.
There is a three-inch silvery fish — called a delta smelt — that needs fresh water to thrive. (It is considered functionally extinct, because no fish have been counted in seven years of surveys since 2018.) But the water flows ordered by California officials also benefited much bigger fish, such as salmon and other commercial fisheries. The smelt is considered a bioindicator, reflecting the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which is on the edge of California’s agriculturally rich Central Valley and which empties into the Pacific Ocean.
But water from Canada doesn’t make it to Southern California — and there is no “giant valve” that can direct it. Instead, the Army Corps of Engineers released 2 billion gallons of water from two reservoirs it controlled — where it largely went to waste so Trump could claim success.
The 2016 campaignIt all may have started in 2007 with a failed golf course deal.
That year, Trump toured a failing golf course called Running Horse in Fresno. “What Trump saw was more than 400 acres of mostly weeds, several huge trenches for sunken fairways and only two holes with grass,” the Fresno Bee reported. “Course construction stopped last year and Running Horse filed for bankruptcy protection in April.”
Trump made an offer, then pulled out — and by 2014, an almond orchard had taken over the site.
Then, in early 2016, Johnny Amaral, a politically connected water authority executive, organized a roundtable for Trump with 50 farmers to discuss water issues and a tour of the Central Valley. Amaral did not return calls from The Fact Checker, but he has described the session in interviews over the years.
Amaral told the Los Angeles Times that the message to Trump was that “the Central Valley is not out of water because of the drought, but because the water is mismanaged.”
“When you see it with your own eyes, it’s hard to unsee this — it’s maddening,” Amaral told Bloomberg News. “I think he saw this problem with his own two eyes and decided that’s a problem that needs to be fixed.”
Trump may have been primed to think this because, in his mind, the Fresno golf course deal fell apart because of a lack of water. “I was going to take it over and do a beautiful job,” he told a campaign rally in 2016. “Fortunately, I didn’t do it because there is no water anymore because they send all the water out to the ocean, right? I got lucky that I didn’t do it, but I would have changed the water. I would have worked it out, no worry.”
According to the Congressional Research Service, farmers already get most of the water that is delivered via the federally run Central Valley Project — about 5 million acre-feet (1.629 trillion gallons). An additional 600,000 acre-feet goes to municipalities and industry, 410,000 acre-feet to wildlife refuges and 800,000 acre-feet to fish and wildlife needs. That means farmers get more than 70 percent of the water in the Central Valley. Another network, the California-run State Water Project, delivers about 70 percent of its water to urban users, including 25 million people in San Francisco Bay, Central Valley and Southern California.
“Many farmers get their water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and they get it with huge pumps that pull it into canals. These pumps are so strong they suck fish into them, and drain so much fresh water that more salt water comes in and harms all of the fish,” said Thomas Holyoke, a political science professor at California State University at Fresno. “Farmers talk more about the smelt, I think, because it has less of an obvious commercial value.”
It has always been a delicate balance in California, where battles over water allocation are legion. More water to farmers means more crops — and higher profits. The flip side is that more water to farmers could mean fewer fish and dirtier water in a fragile ecosystem. But that nuance was lost on Trump, who channeled the farmers’ frustrations to describe the existing policies as “so insane … so ridiculous.”
“It warms our heart a little bit that he still talks about a 30-minute or hour drive around the east side,” Amaral recently told Politico, referring to Trump’s 2016 visit.
Trump’s first term“We’re spending a fortune in California because of poor maintenance and because, frankly, they’re sending a lot of water out to the Pacific to protect the smelt. And, by the way, it’s not working. The smelt is not doing well. But we’re sending millions and millions of gallons, right out into the Pacific Ocean, of beautiful, clean water coming up from the north — or coming down from the north.”
— Trump, during a Cabinet meeting, Aug. 16, 2018
The saga of the delta smelt became a regular feature of Trump’s talking points during his first term. But the first time he mentioned a “valve” was in 2018. The word slipped into his usual spiel about his visit to the Central Valley.
“I look at these incredible, beautiful fields, and they’re dry. It’s like dry as a bone. And I see hundreds and hundreds of acres as far as the eye could see, and then you’d have a little, tiny, little green patch in the corner. Just beautiful — green. It’s so beautiful. So rich … I said, ‘You must have a tremendous drought going on.’ This is like, three and a half, four years ago. … They said, “No, we have so much water, we don’t know what to do with it. But they don’t let the water come down to us.’ … I believe he said they’re trying to protect a smelt. … Nobody knows what a smelt is. I still don’t know what a smelt is. … And they have a — like a valve, but massive. Like from a faucet, but massive. And they turn it and the water goes pouring … out into the Pacific Ocean, where it means nothing.”
Trump mentioned the valve again in 2020, when he signed an executive order on California water accessibility that would have pumped more water into the Central Valley. (A federal judge blocked the order after critics argued it would harm endangered species and salmon runs.)
“Just have the valve go in a little different direction. Okay? This one is easy. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t do it. Someday you’ll explain to me politically why that’s good that you’re rationing water when you have so much water.”
On the campaign trail in 2020, the valve became a regular feature of Trump’s pitter-patter when discussing California water issues and the “tiny, little fish” responsible for the problem.
“In California they have tremendous amounts of water pouring down from the north. You look at it — and yet they have no water. And they’re going to ration everybody. And all they have to do is let the water come down. You heard what they do with the water? They send it out into the Pacific Ocean, they have this massive valve up north, and as the water comes pouring down from the snow and all beautiful nice, clean water, they send it out. Because there’s a tiny, little fish that they are trying to save.”
— Trump, interview with Mark Levin on Fox News, on Sept. 20, 2020
In that interview, a fresh idea occurred to Trump: “Los Angeles, you can’t even water your grass. You’re not allowed to water your grass. You have a home for $25 million, you can’t water the grass.”
The third election campaignTrump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. He immediately started running again — and his stories about California water got even more unmoored from the truth.
First, the delta smelt became even more of a bad guy.
In Los Angeles, “I stayed at one of those houses … $35 million house, and you can’t take a shower. Honestly, it’s a bad way of life. … This is all because Gov. Gavin Newsom and the radical left Democrats, extremists, and the people that run this state, in order to save an extremely unimportant, very little and nonproductive fish, the delta smelt. Did you ever hear of it? … That little sucker is causing you to not be able to clean yourself, the delta smelt. Because of that delta smelt, you don’t have any water. You don’t have farms. You don’t have anything.”
Then, the valve became a giant faucet — in Canada — that would direct water all the way to Los Angeles.
“In order to protect a certain little, tiny fish called a smelt, they send millions and millions of gallons of water out to the Pacific Ocean, way up north, never even gets close to here. … You have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north with the snow caps in Canada all pouring down. And they have a, essentially, a very large faucet. And you turn the faucet, and it takes one day to turn it. It’s massive. It’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you. And you turn that, and all of that water goes aimlessly into the Pacific. And if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles.”
Trump’s remarks confused experts in Canada. The Columbia River runs through British Columbia into the states of Washington and Oregon, but there is no infrastructure to bring that water to California, let alone to Los Angeles.
A month later, Trump even told an L.A. radio station that he had seen the faucet: “Millions of gallons of water, millions and millions — I’ve seen it. It’s like a giant faucet. It takes all of that water coming down from way up north from the snow melts and all. It’s pouring down. And that’s why you have all those empty fields along the highway where you have the farming area.”
He added a new insight: “You know you have the best land in the country just about, but they took the water away. And what would that do to your forest fires? You could let the water — I mean, you have so much water.” …
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