Trump says in bizarre Fox News rant that California has to ration water because it poured its supply into the sea to 'take care of certain little tiny fish'

• In a bizarre monologue on Fox News on Thursday, President Donald Trump said California was redirecting "millions of gallons" of water to the Pacific Ocean to help "certain little tiny fish."
• "California is going to have to ration water. You know why? Because they send millions of gallons of water out to sea, out to the Pacific, because they want to take care of certain little tiny fish that aren't doing very well without water," the US president told Fox News' Sean Hannity.
• Trump has ridiculed Democrats in California for conservation policies that redirect water to the San Francisco Bay to protect a small species of native fish called the delta smelt.
• The Trump administration has moved to roll back protections for the fish to direct more water to farmers, who are among the president's strongest supporters in the state.

In a bizarre monologue on Fox News on Thursday, President Donald Trump said California would have to ration water because it was redirecting "millions of gallons" of water to the Pacific Ocean to help "certain little tiny fish."

The US president, who had difficulty speaking at times during the interview with Sean Hannity, also said that a victory for the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, would transform the US into "a ninth-world country."

Unprompted, he said in a response to a question about a Green New Deal touted by some Democrats: "California is going to have to ration water. You know why? Because they send millions of gallons of water out to sea, out to the Pacific, because they want to take care of certain little tiny fish that aren't doing very well without water, to be honest with you. But it's a very sad thing that's happening."

Trump has ridiculed Democrats in California for conservation policies that redirect water to the San Francisco Bay to protect wildlife, particularly a small, endangered species of native fish called the delta smelt. The fish were nearing extinction by 2015 because of a drought that lasted from 2011 to 2017.

The Trump administration has moved to roll back protections for the fish to direct more water to farmers, who are among the president's strongest supporters in the state.

A 2015 Wall Street Journal op-ed article said that 1.4 trillion gallons of water had been pumped into the San Francisco Bay since 2008 to support the fish. In 2016, Trump, then a presidential candidate, claimed that there was no drought and that policies redirecting water "out to sea" were harming farmers.

But the larger problem may be water management and the limited supply of water in post-drought California. Researchers in 2014 estimated that 63 trillion gallons of groundwater were lost in the western US from 2013 to mid-2014, Quartz reported.