States may end up bearing the brunt of natural disaster management instead of benefitting from the resources of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), President Donald Trump suggested Wednesday.
âAll it does is complicate everything,â Trump said of the agency during a Fox News interview conducted by Sean Hannity in the Oval Office.
The topic was raised during a segment on the Los Angeles wildfires, with Trump baselessly claiming that Democrats want federal funds appropriated there but that âthey donât care about North Carolinaâ in the wake of Hurricane Helene last September.
Trump, who lied about FEMAâs response in that state when he claimed that the agency took money for relief and instead spent it on migrants, went down a similar path again Wednesday.
âWhat they have done with FEMA is so bad,â he groused to Hannity.
âFEMA is another discussion, because all it does is complicate everything. FEMA has not done their job for the last four years,â he continued. âYou know, I had them working really well. We had hurricanes in Florida, we had Alabama tornadoes, but unless you have certain types of leadership itâs reallyâit gets in the way.â
Earlier Wednesday, Trump reportedly named Cameron Hamilton as temporary FEMA administrator, a former Navy SEAL who, as The New York Times notes, apparently has no work history of coordinating responses to natural disasters.
âFEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly because I would rather see the states take care of their own problems,â Trump continued, suggesting big changes were imminent.
As an example of a state where residents wouldnât have FEMAâs resources in a natural disaster, Trump selected deep-red Oklahoma. Whatâs known as âTornado Alleyâ commonly includes that state, as well as Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Iowaâall of which (besides Nebraskaâs second congressional district) backed Trump in each election since 2016.
âOklahoma is very competent...If they get hit with a tornado or something, let Oklahoma fix it. You donât needâand then the federal government can help them out with the money. FEMA is getting in the way of everything and the Democrats actually used FEMA not to help North Carolina,â Trump said.
It wasnât immediately clear if Trump was suggesting that FEMA offer loans to state governments or fund rebuilding efforts outright, which it already does.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and White House Communications Director Steven Cheung did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Trump is scheduled to be in North Carolina on Friday to assess post-Helene recovery efforts. As Trump was criticizing FEMA in the weeks following the hurricane, agency workers were forced to evacuate certain locations in the state after an armed man was arrested for allegedly threatening them.
Trump, though, didnât seem to have much of a problem with that.
