Whoever Smelt It Delta
If you drive south on Palos Verdes Drive in southern California, you get some spectacular views as the rocky PV Peninsula juts out into the Pacific Ocean. On the right, you pass the Point Vicente Lighthouse and the Terranea Resort, a luxury vacation spot for the well-heeled elite. It sits on the site of the former Marineland of the Pacific, a fun destination for families to bring their kids to see whales and dolphins perform in giant seawater tanks. It was sold to the company that owns Sea World in San Diego (who absconded with Corky the Orca, a killer whale that was renamed Shamu).
As you proceed further south, you pass the Trump National Los Angeles Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes. It was there, yesterday, that TFG had a news conference of sorts, with Santa Catalina Island in the background.
And just a little further south, still in Rancho Palos Verdes, over 100 homes are slowly making their way down multiple slumps that will inevitably conveyor belt them down to the crashing waves below.
The plight of these homes was addressed by the former president, who commiserated with RPV’s mayor: “I want to express my support for all of the families affected by the landslides in Rancho Palos Verdes. This area is very solid, but you go a couple of miles down, you’ll see something that’s pretty amazing. The mountain is moving. And it could be stopped but they need some help from the government. So I hope they get the help.”
Tragically, the former president was lying again. There is no fix for this. The Wayfarers Chapel, a local landmark also known as The Glass Church, across PV Drive and just west of the golf course, has given up and closed its doors forever. The RPV homes TFG mentioned are just east of the golf club.
The golf club sits downhill between them. But that’s a story for another decade.
That wasn’t all that TFG had preying on his mind in regard to “government help.” Recent fires in the SoCal area were also uppermost in His Orangeness’s thoughts.
“And Gavin Newscum [sic] is gonna sign those papers, and if he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put [out] all his fires.”
He was speaking, naturally, of the California governor’s stance on protecting Sacramento Delta smelt, an endangered fish species that would be wiped out along with the fragile delta ecosystem if more fresh water from the delta is diverted for agriculture.
TFG hates that, and California will only get federal wildfire aid from a new TFG administration if Newsom lets the fish die.
It’s a trick he tried to use on Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019 when he wanted the Ukraine president to deal the dirt on Joe Biden and his son in exchange for military aid.
That didn’t go very well last time, but you know, if at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.