Vengeful Trump withheld disaster aid and will do so again, former officials warn | Donald Trump

Donald Trump deliberately withheld disaster aid from states he considered politically hostile to his tenure as US president and will do so again unhindered if he returns to the White House, several former officials have warned. the Trump administration.

As Hurricane Helene and then Hurricane Milton ravaged much of the southeastern United States over the past two weeks, Trump sought to shift blame to Joe Biden's administration for its heavy-handed response to disasters, even suggesting that this was deliberate due to the number of disasters. of Republican voters affected by the storms.

But former Trump administration officials said the former president, when in office, initially refused to release federal aid for California wildfires in 2018, refused the wildfire aid for Washington state in 2020 and had severely limited emergency aid to Puerto Rico following devastating Hurricane Maria in 2017 because it felt those places were not providing enough support.

The revelations, first reported by E&E News, raised major doubts about Trump's disaster response if he wins next month's presidential election. The former president has previously been criticized for his role in spreading false information about Helen and Milton, which allegedly slowed the response to the disaster and even led to online death threats against staff and meteorologists at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).

Trump definitely didn't want to give aid to California or Puerto Rico just for partisan politics because they didn't vote for him, said Kevin Carroll, former senior adviser to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly during Trump's term. Carroll said Kelly, later the president's chief of staff, had to twist Trump's arm to get him to release federal funding through Fema for those hard-hit areas.

It was clear that Trump was entirely self-serving and vengeful towards those he believed did not vote for him, Carroll told the Guardian. He even wanted to remove the Navy from Hawaii because they didn't vote for him. We were appalled that these were American civilians who the government was supposed to provide for. The idea of ​​withholding help is contrary to everything you expect from a leader.

Efforts to overcome Trump's reluctance to provide aid to California were successful only after the then-president received voting data showing that Orange County, heavily damaged by the wildfires in Forest, has a large number of Republican voters, according to Homeland Security official Olivia Troye. advisor to the Trump White House.

We had to sit down and think about how he would accept this, because he looked at everything from a political perspective, Troye told the Guardian. There were cases where disaster declarations sat on his desk for days, we got phone calls all the time asking how to speed things up, sometimes we had to get [Vice-President] Mike Pence needs to step up.

It was shocking and appalling to us to see a President of the United States behave in this way. Basically, if it doesn't benefit him, he's not interested. We also saw it in the Covid pandemic, when it was red states versus blue states, and it's still evident in his behavior today, where he is politicizing disaster response. This is dangerous and reckless.

One of the most egregious delays, Troye said, came after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, causing widespread damage and nearly 3,000 deaths. In the wake of the disaster, Trump claimed the death toll was inflated to make me look as bad as possible, called San Juan's mayor crazy and incompetent, and cut off federal support for the island of several billion dollars.

Eventually, Fema covered the debris cleanup in Puerto Rico and Trump visited the U.S. territory, tossing paper towels to hurricane survivors. But not all of the costs of rebuilding the island were paid by the federal government, with an independent inspector general report finding that Fema mismanaged aid distribution in the wake of Maria.

This happened just months before Trump agreed to pay 100% of Florida's costs after the state was hit by Hurricane Michael. They love me in the Panhandle, Trump said, according to an autobiography written by Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida. I must have won 90% of the votes. Huge crowds. What do they need?

While officials around Trump were able to persuade him to back down somewhat in these cases, the former president held his ground by refusing to provide disaster relief to Washington after wildfires ravaged the eastern part of the state, largely destroying the communities of Malden and Pine City, in 2020.

For months, Trump refused Washington's request for federal aid because of his dislike of Jay Inslee, the state's Democratic governor and a prominent critic, according to an aide to Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican congresswoman whose district was ravaged by forest fires.

McMorris Rodgers wrote to Trump to side with him in his dispute with Inslee while pleading with the president to release the funding. Despite our governors' bad-faith personal vendetta against your administration, the people of my district need support, and I implore you to move forward in providing it to those who have been impacted by the devastating wildfires in our region, wrote McMorris Rodgers.

Trump leads a coronavirus task force meeting in April 2020. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Trump, however, did not agree to provide this aid, which was only provided once Joe Biden took office. Trump knowingly and maliciously withheld help in a fit of youthful anger because my state had the audacity to question his policies, Inslee told the Guardian.

What is astonishing is that Trump is taking advantage of his authoritarian instincts by refusing to help people. Most human beings would feel guilty punishing suffering people whose homes are in ashes or under 8 feet of water. It’s honestly a window into the darkness of his soul. We saw once again with North Carolina that he would use natural disasters for his own purposes and his fragile ego. This is a clear and present danger.

Carroll and Troye, former Trump administration officials, predicted there would be less pressure on Trump to withhold disaster aid if he wins another term in the White House. Several Trump allies, including those who wrote the conservative Project 2025 manifesto, have called on the Republican candidate to root out dissidents and install obedient political apparatchiks in the federal government to help implement his wishes.

Next time, you won't have the integrity of Mike Pence: You'll have JD Vance who will do whatever Trump wants, said Troye, who is a Republican but who supported Kamala Harris for president. It's worrying to think about a future Trump administration with only loyalists in these positions around him in these kinds of times that should be non-partisan.

I hope voters pay close attention to the contrast between the responsible leadership demonstrated by Biden and Harris and the dangerous attitude of Donald Trump.

Last month, Trump signaled that his deal on disaster aid would not change if he were president again, warning that he would block aid to California unless the state's governor, Gavin Newsom, does not agree to provide more water to farmers.

Gavin Newscum [Newsom] will sign these papers, Trump said from his golf course in California. If he doesn't sign these papers, we won't give him the money to put out all his fires, and if we don't give him the money to put out his fires, he'll be in trouble.

Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, did not respond to questions about Carroll and Troye's allegations, and instead referred to Trump's efforts to improve wildfire management and repeated and debunked claims that disaster relief money was diverted by Fema to migrants. .

President Trump visited Georgia twice in one week to see the destruction caused by Hurricane Helen and encouraged his supporters to donate more than $6 million for relief efforts on the ground, he said. she declared.

Kamala Harris stole $1 billion from Fema to fund illegal housing for migrants and now there is nothing left for struggling American citizens. President Trump is leading the way in this tragic moment while once again, Kamala leaves Americans behind.

Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/13/trump-disaster-funding-warning The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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