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.
I guess it was gradual, but when did it become the job of journalists to try and guess what politicians mean when they make statements? Shouldn’t the meaning be made clear by the speaker? Right now it seems like its:
Trump: Speaks rambling gibberish saying something about a faucet
Journalists: “It seems like Trump is talking about the Columbia river and here’s why that is significant…”
This is what “sanewashing” refers to, if anyone was unclear on that.
Oh I like that term. Will be applying it in my life. Thank you.
“sanewashing”
The media is rightly concern that MAGA will have a fit if they tell the truth so they go full Onion. We have reached the point of, “Idiocracy”, but here we are.
This should be the word of the year, by the way. Someone really, really nailed it with that portmanteau. It perfectly describes what the “liberal media” does all the time with RWNJs like dimbulb donnie.
The difference is he could be the next president and try to turn whatever he’s thinking into national policy, so it’s worthwhile to try and dissect what he’s saying.
But those experts are also (somehow, still) not really accustomed to Trump’s bombastic language. He was like this long before he got into national politics, hyping real estate and business for the market (where it kind of worked). That’s a totally different world, where half lies and crazy sales talk are the norm.
I get what you’re saying but they really should just be pointing out that he’s not making any sense. Trump’s speeches are being treated like Nostradamus’ prophesies now. He spews a bunch of nonsense and people make up what they think it means. The guy should be in a home, not on the campaign trail and the media should make that clear to voters.
The worst part is they nitpick any piberal or progressive candidate on their exact phrasing while translating conservative hate speech into something less horrible.
It’s not totally incoherent though, its vague and almost poetic.
This is kind of Trump’s talent. He makes these grand statements that aren’t quite lies. The crowd gets exactly what he’s trying to say: all this water pouring out of snowy mountains into the ocean is a “waste” when it could just be diverted to LA, so let’s fix that. It’s worded almost like a dream. It’s an attractive fantasy. But it’s also vague, not quite enough to be a lie even if the implied facts are straight up wrong.
What can the news do? If they dig into it, he didn’t really make any hard claims to roast. They can veer into opinion talk and say that sounds unpresedential and that his speech should be more clear, but making fun of his speech style at a rally is not supposed to be their job. So they do what they can, guess what he’s saying and refute that.
Again, this was his talent before he got into politics. The Motley Fool did this great podcast on Trump (before Trump was big and political) where he sold massively overvalued real-estate from his private company to his public one, effectively “duping” the market, and it worked because he sold it as a vague fantasy just like this. He got plenty of criticism and it didn’t matter, because he threaded the needle and what he’s claiming is not hard enough to stick. This is what he does.
What can the news do? If they dig into it, he didn’t really make any hard claims to roast.
They can quote him as saying there’s “a large faucet as big as perhaps this building and it takes a day to turn” and say there is no such faucet and move on with their day. That would be a much better thing than what they’ve been doing since 2015 which is this bullshit: trying to find a real life thing to attach his utterances to and then asking him if that was what he was referring to when he clearly wasn’t.
His talent is getting other people to fill in the blanks with his absolutely moronic speeches. For a time, people were arguing that “injecting disinfectant” was a great idea, actually, and trying to find science to back that up. Then he walked it back as a joke because he realized everyone except the brain washed lunatics in the country thought he was an absolute idiot for saying that shit.
(Detailed with a large amount of humor here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkO4QAP5wPo)
It’s not the news media’s job to make a blathering imbecile make sense, and they are doing great harm to the country by treating him this way.
The problem is, he has no idea about policy and really no interest in it, except when the decision obviously benefits himself, or benefits those who pretty directly benefit him. So whatever he’s saying at this point is just stuff he thinks sounds good. It bears no relation to what he’ll do, except where there’s obviously something in it for him and his associates. That’s why “I’ll take vengeance on my opponents” or “I’ll increase fossil fuel use and suppress green technologies” are the kinds of statements to take seriously from him, but “I’ll sort out your water problems” is not, unless we can find a benefit for him in it. The question to ask is, “Is he saying this because he thinks it benefits him to say it, or because he thinks it benefits him to do it?” (And for him, making people he dislikes suffer counts as a benefit.)
This does benefit him if it gets him votes. He wants voters to like him, and he’d absolutely build this crazy pipe and slap his name on it if he could.
But like you said, he’d drop it like a rock if it’s inconvenient.
Unlike other politicians, Trump accepted there’s no real consequence for making fantasies up and almost lying, just like he did in business.
“Is he saying this because he thinks it benefits him to say it, or because he thinks it benefits him to do it?”
And anyone who’s on the fence about Trump is not thinking critically like this, they are looking at a few things he’s saying and pondering if its a good thing and benefits them.
And again, fact-based news journalism does not have the luxury of assuming “Here’s what we think he’s saying, and we think he’s making that up because it benefits him, so it’s probably nonsense.”
Goes double for whether or not he’s serious. The number of times I’ve heard something and have had a legitimately hard time telling if he’s joking, or exaggerating, or just a complete fucking moron is absolutely crazy. Pretty much every sentence he utters becomes this endless game of trying to figure it out. It seems like his base just kind of randomly picks the option that makes the most sense to them and rolls with it.
He’s joking if someone calls him on it, but serious if they don’t.
The Krusty the Clown approach to threatening people.
If you haven’t seen it : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zIu2dGTJlHM
News Readers in USA have been paraphrasing a long time. Now “paraphrasing” works really hard.
If you support Turmp at this point, you’re a fucking dunce.
If someone ever supported Trump, they’re a fucking dunce.
In 2016: Maybe it was a funny protest vote “against the system”, for memes or whatever.
In 2020: Maybe voters were tricked into believing what he was doing was good or something. Jan 6 should have been a wakeup call.
In 2024: Just take a look at ANYTHING Trump has said, and what he has actually done about it and you should know that he is the least trustworthy guy you’ll ever meet. At this point it’s delusional. I could have excused it for the past 5 to 8 years but now I can’t.
I stopped giving conservatives the benefit of the doubt around the point where the Republican party had every chance, every opportunity to go with any other nominee this year, claw back some sense of decorum… and then they chose the Oompa Loompa again. In 2020, at least it made sense for them to hold on to the incumbency advantage, and in 2016, Hillary was a horrible candidate and it’s no wonder she lost.
I stopped giving conservatives the benefit of the doubt in 1980.
In 2020? When he got caught trying to kill Democrats by withholding COVID aid?
I know we all have short memories but he got voted out for a reason. About 500 scandals.
Yeah what the fuck Zachary Levi? You played a action hero Nerd on TV. Why are you stupid?
Aww, Chuck Bartowski is a Trumper? That’s a shame, I liked him.
We are long, long, long past that point.
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.
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?
Anyone still supporting this human shaped STD has herpes of the brain.
I disagree. He is not human shaped.
honestly even just saying “shaped” is a bit of a stretch
He’s a single-celled organism and I live in fear that one day he’ll divide by mitosis and then we’ll have two of him
I’d imagine it would be like RimmerWorld episode of Red Dwarf where none of them stays in power for more than 15 minutes before being back stabbed and taken over by another.
It takes a day to turn
He really said that
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.
Oregonian, here. We need that water to flush our absolutely gigantic toilet so California can’t have it!
So you’re saying trump has to decide what is more important, California or being anti low flow toilets. RIP California.
That explains Drain, OR. I always wondered what the actual drain looked like!
I love that Trump has no ability to do any critical thinking, and thinks of everything as very literal now. He believes the planes are actually invisible, the only way to prevent Forrest fires is to actually rake the forest, and now that a literal giant faucet would be used to divert water in what kinda sounds like a Roman aqueduct to Socal.
I also agree that journalists should not be spinning Trump’s word salad, that makes zero sense, by calling them “poetic” and then trying to explain what the hell he is maybe trying to say. He is running to the President of the US, if he can’t explain how he wants to use plumbing to divert water from the Columbia river to Socal he should be asked about that over and over until he can articulate that. Journalists doing the heavy lifting of making real ideas out of Trump’s babble should be looked down upon. Instead they continue to “both sides” anything left of the far-right.
I think he has things explained to him that are drastically dumbed down to give him a chance of comprehension. Then he misunderstands the explanation, and misremembers the entire exchange, and we get the word vomit that has the barest shadow of reality.
He is also famous for not listening, because he thinks he is smarter than everyone in the room. He is also rarely held accountable for any of the word salad that he spews like a firehose. He also surrounds himself with people providing constant negative reinforcement of rewarding him like he actually did well, when in reality he functions so outside acceptable for most things. Then couple that with being a classic narcissist and it’s not surprising he is basically clueless on almost any subject asked of him.
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”!
Trump also said: the faucet is made by ACME and managed by my good friend Wile E. Cayote.
And we can solve the problem of climate change by going to the opposite side of the sun and turning off the Enormous Fan, thereby eliminating the solar wind.
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.
They got a lake ready for it and everything!
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.
Without the Columbia, the Idaho port city of Lewiston is doomed. Just in case anyone needed a silver lining.
