Trump spoke to thousands in San Diego later on Friday afternoon at the San Diego Convention Center Corporation.
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Several hundred protesters are marching around the arena where Trump is speaking. Officers arrested two other people after the rally on suspicion of unlawful assembly after they did not follow orders to clear the streets.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says he doesn’t really think California’s water crisis is caused by drought.
Trump blamed his withdrawal on “the fact that the Democratic nominating process is totally rigged and crooked Hillary Clinton and [Democratic National Committee chair] Deborah Wasserman Schultz will not allow Bernie Sanders to win”.
Trump promised that, if he’s elected, he would put their interests first.
“Both offers include a major contribution to charity”, Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver said in a statement.
Trump aligned with those concerns Friday when he said state officials and environmentalists are trying “to protect a three-inch fish”, presumably referring to the threatened Delta smelt. “What’s going to happen for the ability for water to originate in Northern California to make its way through the Delta to Southern California”, said Ryan Jacobsen, Fresno Farm Bureau. “You have a water problem that’s so insane”, Trump said. In which case-Californians, please, listen to Mr. Trump and do NOT shove your water out to sea.
Trump’s rallies Friday in Fresno and San Diego drew vocal crowds of protesters under heavy police presence.
Many protesters carried signs critical of his plan to wall off the US border with Mexico, which runs just south of the city. Protesters were seen waving the Mexican flag.
“They don’t understand it”, Trump said. “There is no drought, they turn the water out in to the ocean”. Some farmers want more of that flow captured and diverted to them. The smelt has become an emblem in the state’s battles over environmental laws and water distribution.
“When I just left 50 or 60 farmers in the back and they can’t get water, and I say, ‘how tough is it, how bad is the drought?'” Trump recalled.
“I’m getting railroaded by a legal system”, Trump complained.
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California is the country’s No. 1 agriculture producer. Despite an El Niño event that saw an increase a year ago in snowpacks that supply about one-third of California’s water, 86 percent of the state is still considered to be in drought.
