SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Nearly 20,000 people have been evacuated since Sunday, when California’s Oroville Dam reached capacity and threatened catastrophic flooding. The spillway, which acts to prevent overflows by diverting excess water, was reported to be on the cusp of collapse. On February 10, sensing the imminent danger to property and life, Governor Jerry Brown appealed directly to the White House for issuance of a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration. However, the president did not respond for three days. But late Monday evening, Trump finally contacted Brown to say that building a wall to stop the flood of Mexican terrorists is more important than fixing a dam to stop an actual flood in a “terrible, terrible place like California."

Federal Assistance is Socialism, More Dangerous Than Nazism and Natural Disasters

As Occupy Democrats observed, citing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official policy, “A major disaster declaration provides a wide range of federal assistance programs for individuals and public infrastructure, including funds for both emergency and permanent work.”

Rich Reinig, a member of the National Guard detail summoned by Gov. Brown on Sunday, described himself as “flabbergasted” when he received the instructions to abort the mission, presumably from President Trump directly. However, Reinig confessed that he could barely decipher the message, which was “packed with a bunch of language promising political favors to local businessmen, a plea to buy some clothes at Kmart, a lot of blithering on about being popular, and somewhere in all that hogwash was a note saying that any federal presence might be sending an anti-American message.”

Reinig told reporters, “This is the worst disaster to hit the area since Trump’s inauguration. I can’t believe we’ve been asked to abandon these poor people to their doom.”

Around 9:00 p.m. Eastern, Press Secretary Sean Spicer read from a prepared statement to the press:

This was not an easy conclusion to arrive at. Presidents Bannon and Trump put their heads together and thoroughly reviewed the issues at hand. We can’t predict the weather or what devastation may come with it. We need to stay focused on the issues. And as Republicans, whom you elected to represent your best interests, we understand that reducing the deficit, stripping women and gays of their rights, firebombing the inner cities, intimidating foreign leaders, banning Muslims and cutting taxes are still the biggest challenges facing us today. Asking FEMA to rush in here like a bunch of Stormtroopers is inviting more government intervention, federal spending, tax hikes and socialism. And having that particular dam burst would be more detrimental to the health of the nation than an actual dam bursting and killing tens of thousands of liberals.

After the news conference, Spicer also mentioned that Trump officials felt the people of Yuba City, a rural area most threatened by the collapse of the Oroville Dam, deserved some portion of the blame.

“They need to bail themselves out before turning to the government for help,” Spicer told press members outside the meeting area. “What good’s living in a house on wheels if you can’t drive away from danger?”

California Needs Walls, Not Dams

Gov. Brown and local legislators expressed frustration that previous requests for disaster relief funds had been ignored, while the president responded punctually to similar requests from Oregon.

“Brown formally requested the declaration for the series of storms striking the state between Jan. 3 and Jan. 12,” The Mercury News reported. “Heavy rains, winds and snow, particularly in Northern California, left eight people dead and knocked out power to an estimated 1 million Californian homes and businesses without power.”

Brown estimated the cleanup effort would cost the state more than $162 million. Because Trump refused to acknowledge the initial request -- and the decidedly more pressing follow up -- many authorities took Trump’s silence as another show of his vindictive behavior.

California has become a thorn in the administration’s side, launching countless attacks against the president and his family. Retailers began refusing to carry Ivanka Trump’s Chinese-manufactured clothing lines, the state threatened to stop paying taxes to defy executive orders that attempted to limit civil liberties, and millions of illegal immigrants were encouraged to vote three or four times for Hillary.

The president’s defenders explained that he has been burdened with more urgent demands and activities.

“Mr. Trump has been stretched to the limits this week,” Spicer said. “He has embroiled in Twitter feuds with Mark Cuban, the U.S. court system, Nordstrom and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau’s insolent refusal to accept a bully handshake. Also, the president just spent $3 million in taxpayer funds for a third consecutive weekend of golf at Mar-a-Lago. We still have budget priorities to maintain.”

The budget issue has also sparked controversy with California, with the administration committed to moving forward with a futile $25 billion wall along the Mexico border. Trump remained adamant that the wall was more imperative than the dam.

“You know, all those lying, terrible people in California have been praying for rain, you know, to end their fake drought, which they blame on fake climate change,” Trump said. “Now that they’ve got water, it’s too much. Typical, spoiled, babies. But I am firm on my position. As a nation, we’ve got to sacrifice sometimes for the greater good. Building a wall to keep Mexican and Muslim terrorists from pouring into California is more important than fixing a dam to keep some water from pouring in. Let’s worry more about preventing rapist wetbacks from slipping through the cracks than a little wetness.”

(c) 2017. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. All articles are works of satire. See disclaimers.