President Donald Trump's tweets about the fires have drawn confusion, since the state's firefighters have said they are not aware of a water supply problem. | Macio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo Trump wildfire tweets spark bewilderment about California water The president has blamed ‘bad environmental laws’ for making California’s fires worse.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Californians are stunned at President Donald’s Trump’s latest tweets on the state‘s catastrophic wildfires — and his insistence that the state is burning because leaders are letting too much fresh water flow into the Pacific Ocean.

Trump tweeted Monday that California “Governor Jerry Brown must allow the Free Flow of the vast amounts of water coming from the North and foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Can be used for fires, farming and everything else. Think of California with plenty of Water - Nice! Fast Federal govt. approvals.”


That tweet — on the heels of a Sunday tweet that referenced California’s “bad environmental laws” as a cause of the state’s current raging wildfires — drew an immediate reaction from veteran California GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, who responded via Twitter: “This is nuts’’ and also “low water IQ.” Stutzman has advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a host of national and state GOP candidates.

California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amounts of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire from spreading! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2018

Trump’s comments may be referencing an unrelated dispute between Brown's administration and California Republicans over how much of the state's water can be diverted to Southern California farms and cities and how much must be allowed to flow naturally to benefit endangered and threatened fish species.

Wildfires around California have killed nine people, but firefighters have not raised concerns about the available water supplies.

“The notion that somehow more water would be mitigating or better in fighting these fires is just mind-boggling,’’ Stutzman told POLITICO on Monday. “I don’t watch 'Fox & Friends,' but it would seem that someone has put the idea in his head. It doesn’t even show an elementary understanding of water policy.’’

Fox & Friends had aired a segment about the California fires nearly five hours before Trump‘s Monday tweet but didn’t discuss water issues as part of the segment.

Stutzman called the president’s recent tweets on California fires and water policy “frightening,” saying that “water has nothing to do with why these places are tinder boxes. It’s very exasperating. ... It’s a statement from the president that shows no understanding of hydrology.”

He said he would advise Brown, a Democrat, to “not take the bait” and react to such uninformed views.

Indeed, Evan Westrup, the spokesman for Brown, told POLITICO that “this does not merit a response.” But he also added via email: “It’s a sad state of affairs when journalism is reduced to chasing the uninformed, unsupervised tweets of the president.”

Some Democrats seized on the latest tweet. Rhys Williams, spokesman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom, tweeted: “Has anybody seen the baby’s pacifier? He dropped it again.”

In a purely political sense, Trump’s tweets reflected his alignment with California Republicans who have long complained that the state unfairly prioritizes environmental uses for water over the state’s sprawling agricultural industry. Putting “fish over farms” is a popular formulation that has been invoked by Trump allies from California’s agricultural heartland, such as Reps. Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy.

“Forests should be managed properly and water should be allowed for farmers to grow food to feed people,” Nunes wrote on Twitter in response to Trump’s Sunday tweet, cheering the president "for bringing much needed attention to our flawed environmental policies!"

Trump has courted the Republican-leaning Farm Bureau heavily. California’s water wars are a huge issue for the group. Trump addressed the annual Farm Bureau convention in January, becoming the first president in more than two decades to do so. He also raised the issue during a campaign stop in Fresno in 2016.

But experts who make their living studying California’s water system reacted for the second consecutive day with a communal groan of exasperation. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute, one of the state’s foremost experts on how the state manages its water, issued a tweet calling Trump’s latest missive “nuts” after labeling the president’s initial tweet “gobbledygook bullsh--.”

In an email to POLITICO, Gleick noted that the water that flows from California’s rivers into the ocean is what remains after cities and farms take their gulp — and that those flows are critical to shoring up ecosystems that, in some parts of the state, are teetering on the brink of collapse.

“Trump's tweets last night and today show a profound misunderstanding about water, fires, California environmental policy, and of course, climate change,” Gleick said, adding that the “idea that somehow state water policies are leading to a shortage of water for fighting the fires is too stupid to rebut.”

Stutzman said that even more potentially damaging is that the president’s Twitter pronouncement is “even somewhat offensive, given that he’s trying to make a point on the backs of these fires.’’

He noted the president on Twitter to date has shown “no sympathy” and expressed no personal concern for the 18 active and raging blazes around the state, which have to date been responsible for the destruction of more than 1,000 homes and billions of dollars in damage.

Ironically, Stutzman said, Trump has stepped on what could have been his own positive message to California — that the White House “has been quick to approve funds and the emergency declarations have come without any complications.’’

In July, the State Water Resources Control Board proposed major changes to the state's water allocations, preserving more for ailing fish populations. The changes are slated for a vote later this month. That announcement drew the ire of the state's agricultural groups, and state Republicans have turned to their allies in Congress, who have voted to block federal funding related to the allocation plan.

—Rebecca Morin contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated the status of California State Water Resources Control Board action on water allocation. The board plans to vote on proposed changes later this month.