President Donald Trump told POLITICO on Wednesday that he vetoed a bipartisan bill to fund a Colorado water project because he views it as a waste of taxpayer money, saying residents are leaving the state under Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.
“They’re wasting a lot of money and people are leaving the state. They’re leaving the state in droves. Bad governor,” Trump said in an exclusive phone interview with POLITICO.
The measure, the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, H.R. 131 (119), would have helped complete a pipeline project to deliver clean drinking water to communities in southeastern Colorado, where Trump’s support runs deep.
It passed both chambers of Congress unanimously before Trump vetoed the bill. On Tuesday, the White House announced Trump’s veto of the bill — along with another piece of legislation that would have granted the Miccosukee Tribe in Florida limited control over a part of the Everglades.
Trump’s veto comes amid a broader feud with Polis. The president has repeatedly criticized the governor over the case of Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk serving a nine-year sentence after she was convicted of state charges for allowing unauthorized access to voting machines. Peters, like Trump, has spread conspiracy theories about Trump’s 2020 electoral loss.
In a Truth Social post earlier in December, Trump said he was granting Peters a full pardon, but Polis noted that presidents have no authority to pardon people for state-level convictions. “No president has jurisdiction over state law nor the power to pardon a person for state convictions,” Polis said at the time.
In a new post to his social media site Wednesday, Trump again defended Peters, saying he wished the “scumbag” governor and local prosecutor “only the worst” due to their treatment of her.
“May they rot in Hell,” he wrote. “FREE TINA PETTERS!”
The administration has also denied recent disaster declaration requests from Colorado following wildfires and flooding in December, a move the White House insists is not politically motivated.
“It’s very disappointing that the President is hurting rural Colorado by vetoing this bipartisan and non-controversial bill … we’ll continue to fight for this extremely worthy and important project,” Polis said in a statement. Colorado lawmakers also blasted the veto as punitive.
“This isn’t governing. It’s a revenge tour. It’s unacceptable,” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said in an X post Tuesday.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a Trump ally and one of the bill’s sponsors, said the fight is not over.
“President Trump decided to veto a completely noncontroversial, bipartisan bill that passed both the House and Senate unanimously,” Boebert said in a statement on Tuesday. “If this administration wants to make its legacy blocking projects that deliver water to rural Americans, that’s on them.”
Trump’s veto of the Miccosukee Tribe bill cited his immigration policies as one of the reasons for his veto, saying “despite seeking funding and special treatment from the Federal Government, the Miccosukee Tribe has actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected.”
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