9mo ago

Trump Promises 'Very Large Faucet' Will Funnel Water from Oregon to Los Angeles

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.

101 comments

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 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.)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
  
  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.
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
It takes a day to turn
He really said that
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!
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.
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.
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.
Without the Columbia, the Idaho port city of Lewiston is doomed. Just in case anyone needed a silver lining.
Dimbulb donnie is just everyone's Crazy Uncle Liberty, and it's been Thanksgiving since about 2015.
Can't wait for the next forest fire in Canada and Trump to suggest a big fan to blow the smoke away from the US.
- Just switch all our wind turbines from suck to blow. Easy.
  
  I don't know why this triggered my brain but I can't stop imagining this in my head and laughing my ass off.
  
  Assuming we could actually create enough air flow to blow smoke out to sea, we'd be creating one hell of a weather phenomenon in the middle states.
My favorite type of incoherent gibberish is the type that might be trying to talk about a terrible idea.
Politicians keep talking about building pipelines from places that have water to places that don't.
Maybe the answer is actually that California isn't the best place for agriculture once you get past the easy access to migrate labor, and they should price industrial and agricultural water usage accordingly.
- Next you're going to term us farming the desert is a bad idea. We'll I can't hear you because I'm covering my ears. So nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!
The PNW isn’t immune to the drought pal.
Uhm.
Ok. He should not be in charge of the executive office. We know he's stupid but, damn.
He’s such a fucking embarrassment. Someone needs to stop putting microphones in front of his hamberder hole.
As an Oregonian, I have no idea what faucet he's talking about.
Bonneville Dam maybe? 🤔
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_Dam
- 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
~~promises~~
Deranged ramblings
Is this faucet from the same company that will sell the takes to sweep up the leaves in the forests to stop forest fires?
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.
It’s definitely an intriguing idea, but it seems like this "faucet" plan might be more complicated in practice than it sounds in theory. Getting water from the Columbia River down to Los Angeles involves not just massive infrastructure but also overcoming significant ecological and legal challenges. Plus, as the experts pointed out, it's pretty costly and inefficient. While addressing water shortages is crucial, perhaps more feasible and sustainable solutions like improving water-use efficiency and investing in desalination plants would be better routes to explore.
- Yeah but it's all going down from Oregon to California. That's down on the map, which means it's all downhill, so it should really be quite simple. (/s obviously)
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.
Let him. Why should we do the intellectual work of disassembling his bullshit only so the campaign can come back with what they actually mean. Just let him sound stupid.
It's not impossible as many are thinking. However I would never vote for another Republican lying bastard asshole ever again. But think about how we move oil around the country besides stupid trains. We use pipelines. So now just build one and fill it with water rather than oil. It won't pay for itself because the price of water is so much lower than oil. But if you all want some water, it's just a long ass straw.
- Well I will leave it to you to turn the faucet as large as the building behind you in a day. If you fail to do it in a day... Which doesn't exist, and therefore impossible, come back and let me know how it isnt impossible
- They sont have any pipelines running into California because the terrain makes them prohibitedly expensive. If BP and Exxon Mobile say it is cheaper to import Saudi crude to California because it is too expensive to pipe Texas crude, then there is no way. Canada has one pipeline to connect Albertam oil to Vancouver, but it is so expensive to pipe that oil across the Canadian Rockies that the pipe it downhill to Saskatchewan where it can then be pipped downhill all the way to Texas. Pipelines across mountains are just not feasible unless you are trying to move stuff from the top of the mountain to the bottom.
  
  Much like oil it would probably be easier to haul the water via train than make a pipe which can cover that terrain.
- It’s still a stupid idea. Taking the runoff from a mountain and pumping it thousands of miles is more expensive than getting water from natural aquifers locally. Heck, even building a local desalination plant and turning saltwater from the city’s coast is cheaper than this giant pipeline idea. There’s a reason NYC doesn’t need to build a pipe all the way from Niagara Falls.
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