Trump investigating California's high-speed rail project

LOS ANGELES - President Donald Trump is criticizing California's high-speed rail project, vowing to investigate what he called the "worst managed project" he's ever seen.

Trump made the comments to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, a day before Gov. Gavin Newsom is scheduled to visit the White House to seek more federal funds for wildfire recovery efforts.

"One of the things I want to investigate rapidly, because I've never seen anything to this extent—the train that's being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is the worst managed project I think I've ever seen and I've seen some of the worst," he said.

Trump said the project was "hundreds of billions of dollars over budget," a claim that the California High Speed Rail Authority refuted. 

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"It is the worst thing, and we're going to start an investigation of that because it's not possible. I built for a living and I built on time - on budget," he said. "It's impossible that something could cost that much."

Trump also claimed the project is off-track, not going to the originally intended locations - another claim the CHSRA said wasn't true.

"They made it much shorter, so now it's at little places way away from San Francisco and way away from Los Angeles," Trump said. "We're going to start a big investigation on that because I've never seen anything like it. Nobody's ever seen anything like it."

When asked who would lead the investigation, Trump responded, "I'm doing that myself."

The CHSRA fired back on social media, saying "Ignore the noise. We're busy building."