Trump Seems Determined To Kill His Own Supporters By Gutting FEMA
Trump suggested that he would like to get rid of FEMA, which is his biggest threat to the welfare and safety of the American people and his own supporters yet.
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Images define a presidency. The image of Hurricane Katrina battering a helpless New Orleans and people begging for help for their flooded city for agonizing days and weeks were some of the lingering pictures that for many, along with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, defined the failed presidency of George W. Bush.
The lessons of Katrina have become a policy shorthand in disaster relief circles, and in the decades since, FEMA has been an exemplary agency and role model for the rest of the world in disaster relief.
Those heartbreaking Katrina images could be a regular occurrence if Donald Trump gets his way.
Trump said while speaking to Sean Hannity on Fox News:
I will say that Los Angeles has changed everything. Because a lot of money is going to be necessary for Los Angeles. And a lot of people on the other side want that happen fast.
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Well, they don't care about North Carolina. The Democrats don't care about North Carolina. What they've done with FEMA is so bad. FEMA is a whole other discussion. Because all it does is complicate everything. FEMA has not done their job for the last four years. You know, I had FEMA working really well.
We had hurricanes in Florida. We had Alabama, tornadoes. But unless you have certain types of leadership, it's really And FEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly because I'd rather see the states take care of their own problems.
Herbert Hoover was elected president based on his sterling work on disaster relief during World War I in Europe and his disaster relief efforts as Secretary of Commerce after the Great Mississippi Flood in 1927 because there was no organized federal government response to natural disasters.
There were no FEMA resources for states to rely on and boots on the ground ready to deploy after a tornado, hurricane, flood, or wildfire.
The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 killed 500 people and left 700,000 homeless. The monetary cost of the damage was one-third of the entire federal budget, and Donald Trump wants to take America back to that time in disaster relief.
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