WASHINGTON ― After making political hay of a prepare derailment and a hurricane throughout his marketing campaign to return to the White Home, President Donald Trump since retaking workplace has failed to go to a single pure catastrophe web site on his watch and has slow-walked support to victims.
On Feb. 14, windstorms and torrential rains induced floods and mudslides in Kentucky and West Virginia, killing 25. Trump didn’t go to the affected communities, however did spend the next 5 days taking part in golf at his golf equipment in South Florida.
Precisely one month later, sturdy winds, tornadoes and wildfires wreaked havoc throughout Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi, leaving 34 individuals useless. Trump once more didn’t go to however as a substitute spent that weekend at his course in West Palm Seashore, Florida, and the next weekend at his membership in Bedminster, New Jersey.
And on Could 16, tornadoes and heavy rain once more ravaged Missouri and Kentucky. This time, 25 individuals died, however once more, Trump didn’t go to both state within the coming days — however did handle a spherical of golf at his course in Virginia that weekend, and at Bedminster the weekend after.
In all, near 100 People have died in dozens of tornadoes, straight-line windstorms, floods and wildfires since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. None has merited a presidential go to.
What’s extra, he has reneged on guarantees he made to Tropical Storm Helene victims in North Carolina in the course of the one journey he has made to websites of disasters that occurred beneath his predecessor, Joe Biden.
“We’re going to get you the assets you want and the assist that you just deserve and we’ll be at your aspect by means of each step of the rebuilding,” he instructed residents of Swannanoa on Jan. 24. “The best accountability and deepest obligation of the American authorities is to guard its individuals and that’s by no means more true than in occasions of emergency like this.”
Within the 5 months since, although, Trump and his administration haven’t delivered new support, together with billions particularly focused for North Carolina in December’s spending invoice, and has as a substitute reduce on paying for the cleanup prices.
On Could 22, the Federal Emergency Administration Company told North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein that his direct appeal to Trump asking for the federal authorities to proceed paying 100% of cleanup prices was “not warranted.”
That denial and different proposed FEMA coverage adjustments will cost the state and its native governments some $2 billion.
Trump’s White Home didn’t reply to HuffPost queries about his alternative to not go to websites of disasters on his watch. As an alternative, he has repeatedly pushed a plan to eliminate FEMA.
“We need to wean off of FEMA,” he instructed reporters once more final week. “It’s extraordinarily costly and, once more, when you have got a twister or a hurricane or you have got an issue of any sort, in a state, that’s what you have got governors for.”
“Trump undermined the Helene response in actual time by spreading harmful misinformation that scared good individuals out of getting the assistance they have been owed, like cash for fixing their properties,” mentioned Andrew Bates, a former deputy press secretary in Biden’s White Home and a North Carolina native. “Now Trump is stranding the identical North Carolinians he damage, particularly in rural areas, by breaking his promise to fund the restoration.”
Politicizing disasters
Whereas Trump has been abandoning catastrophe victims since taking workplace, he was actively pursuing them as he ramped up his run for president in 2023.
Certainly, Trump was capable of win appreciable media consideration in February, simply because the Republican major marketing campaign was beginning, with a go to to East Palestine, Ohio, following the derailment of a prepare carrying industrial chemical substances. He railed in opposition to Biden’s administration — regardless that each FEMA and the Environmental Safety Company have been on the bottom inside hours — and in opposition to Biden for not personally visiting.
“In too many circumstances, your goodness and perseverance have been met with indifference and betrayal,” Trump told neighborhood leaders throughout his Feb. 22 journey, three weeks after the accident.
That technique continued after he had wrapped up the nomination the next yr. When then-Hurricane Helene hit Florida after which continued on a path of destruction northward, Trump traveled to Valdosta, Georgia, the place he took credit for supplies introduced there by the personal charity, Samaritan’s Purse. He continued to assault Biden, at the same time as Republican Gov. Brian Kemp praised the administration for its immediate response.
However Trump’s most aggressive mendacity about that storm and its devastation was in North Carolina, the place Trump accused Biden and FEMA of purposefully ignoring victims within the western a part of the state as a result of they have been possible Trump voters.
“They’ve left People to drown in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and elsewhere within the South,” he wrote in a Sept. 30 social media submit.
Trump stored up these assaults even after the election was over and he had received. Throughout his go to to Swannanoa in late January, Trump instructed his supporters: “You’re handled very badly by the earlier administration… Our authorities failed you, however it wasn’t the Trump authorities. It was a authorities run by Biden.”
Shifting burden to the states
That go to to North Carolina and — later that day, Los Angeles — stay the one catastrophe web site visits by Trump since returning to workplace, regardless of dozens of latest storms and fires which have nearly solely hit states that voted for him. And even on that journey, Trump spent a complete of two hours and 51 minutes in and round Asheville, 3 hours and 38 minutes in Los Angeles, however 46 hours and 5 minutes at his Doral golf resort in South Florida.
Trump, in reality, has performed golf on 40 days, a full 27 % of his 147 days in workplace so far, at a value to taxpayers of $38.4 million, in line with a HuffPost evaluation. As well as, he has traveled to the Tremendous Bowl, to the Daytona 500, to a lot of kickboxing matches, and to occasions benefiting his for-profit enterprise ventures, all on the taxpayer dime ― indicating that had he needed to go to catastrophe websites, he had the time to take action.
It’s unclear why Trump has chosen to not go to the stricken communities, which, traditionally, has been one of many fundamental duties of being president.
Biden, for instance, went to Houston, Texas, on Feb. 26, 2021, barely a month after taking workplace, to go to victims of a extreme winter storm two weeks earlier. He was met there by Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott. In July, he traveled to Surfside, Florida, the place a condominium constructing had collapsed. He went to New Jersey and New York Metropolis in September to see flooding from Hurricane Ida. In December, he flew to Kentucky following a spate of tornadoes. In these visits and others, he pledged federal support to scrub up and rebuild.
Trump, in distinction, has repeatedly expressed his need to cut back the federal authorities’s position in recovering from pure disasters — a task that got here into being as a result of the prices are sometimes too nice for native communities and states to bear on their very own.
Even throughout his journeys to California and North Carolina on Jan. 24, Trump on a number of events talked about his aim to dramatically “reform” FEMA or to eradicate it fully.
“The FEMA individuals kind of left you excessive and dry, however we’re going to alter that round. We’re not pleased with FEMA,” he instructed supporters in Swannanoa.
Final week, Trump defined that state governors ought to be coping with disasters, not the federal authorities.
“We’re transferring it again to the states, so the governors can deal with it. That’s why they’re governors. Now, if they’ll’t deal with it, they shouldn’t be governor. However these governors can deal with it. They usually’ll work together with different governors,” he mentioned.
For governors, even governors with sturdy ties to Trump, this new strategy has left their states hurting and unable to pay for rebuilding following storms.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican who labored as Trump’s press secretary throughout his first administration, initially had her catastrophe support request for the March 14 lethal tornadoes denied by FEMA. She ultimately received a catastrophe declaration solely after getting Trump on the cellphone on Could 14.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, additionally a Republican, mentioned he needed to push Trump repeatedly to win catastrophe declarations for the storms in March and remains to be working to get assist for the tornadoes that ravaged the St. Louis space in Could.
“This will get into a giant challenge that I’ve obtained with FEMA proper now,” he told St. Louis Public Radio earlier this month. “What I found is they’re slow-walking each catastrophe reduction declaration from throughout the nation.”
“Donald Trump cares so little concerning the People he promised to combat for that he’d reasonably spend time dishonest at golf than serving to victims of Helene,” Bates mentioned. “Nonetheless a lot cash his companies handle to steal from taxpayers, he’ll all the time be broke the place it counts.”
