California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) thought he had Elon Musk in a "gotcha" moment, but he left his social media followers wondering what point he was trying to make.

Newsom went after Musk for suggesting that firefighters didn't have the water supplies they needed, but there's no denying that a lack of water pressure in some areas has hampered the efforts of firefighters to contain them.

A video shared by Newsom on X showed Musk in a discussion with firefighters about the water supply.

He asked about water availability, and a firefighter told him that the reservoirs did have water, but "there really is no water system that can keep pace (with the fires)."

Reservoir was empty

When Musk pressed him about a water shortage in Palisades, where one of the worst fires was (and is), the firefighter repeated that the system couldn't keep up, but avoided directly answering the question.

CBS News reported on Tuesday that a 117-million gallon reservoir near Pacific Palisades was indeed empty and under renovation when the fires broke out.

Firefighters there quickly depleted any available water and had to rely on mobile tanks being brought in from other locations.

So where was the gotcha, exactly? Seems to me Musk was dead right in his contentions, but that the firefighter was able to spin the story to avoid saying so.

Newsom defensive

Musk has said that Newsom's leadership was shoddy on the fires and suggested that he cut the firefighting budget by $100 million before the fires.

Newsom is in defense mode, seeing any hope of future elected office literally going up in smoke.

Granted, it is easy to point fingers in the heat of the moment.

The crisis is still going on. There hasn't been enough time to do a full analysis of what happened and whose fault everything is.

No doubt Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) will also bear some of the brunt as well.

She was in Ghana when the fires broke out even though she was apparently warned ahead of time that the Santa Ana winds were revving up and that fire risk was high.