Minutes after touching down in storm-hit Valdosta, Georgia, former President Donald J. Trump made elaborate false claims about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helen.
“The governor is doing a very good job,” Trump said of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. The problem, the former president claimed, is that Kemp is “having a hard time calling the president.”
Trump, wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, his trademark blue suit and long red tie, added: The federal government has not responded. ”
But earlier Monday, Kemp himself told a different story. He said he had spoken with Biden the night before and expressed his appreciation for the president’s response.
“He said, ‘Hey, what do you need?'” Kemp said. “And I told him we have what we need. We’re going to go through the federal process.”
Kemp said Biden “offered to call me directly if I needed anything else, which I appreciate.”
Trump’s anecdote highlighted his approach to federal disaster relief rather than his dishonesty. As president, he viewed federal aid through the prism of his personal politics, threatening to withhold funds from governors of blue states he considered enemies and promising “positive” treatment to allies.
The Trump administration proposed cutting the budget of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the agency responsible for disaster relief, and Trump administration officials diverted funds from FEMA to deal with immigration enforcement. FEMA has been understaffed throughout Mr. Trump’s presidency, and he did not consider it a priority for funding until the coronavirus pandemic. He instead viewed the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, simply as an immigration enforcement agency.
After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017, Trump told aides he wanted to stop money flowing to the island because the island’s leadership was corrupt. He also falsely claimed that Puerto Rican authorities were inflating the death toll from the hurricane.
The most memorable photo of Trump, who visited the island after Maria, was of him tossing paper towels to desperate island residents, as if shooting free throws. . In September 2020, three years after the hurricane made landfall, Trump said he would eventually send $13 billion worth of aid to Puerto Rico. The announcement came two months before Election Day, as polls at the time predicted a tight race in the state and the Trump campaign was chasing Puerto Rican voters in the state.
California was another state where the former president’s personal policies collided with the need for emergency federal relief. The 2018 wildfire season was the most destructive in California history. Trump, who had positioned Democratic Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom’s presidency as a bulwark, responded to the disaster by publicly attacking the state and threatening relief funding.
In January 2019, Trump said he would withhold FEMA aid from California if the state did not improve its forest management practices. “Billions of dollars are being sent to California for wildfires that would never happen with proper forest management,” he wrote on what was then known as Twitter. “Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to not send any more funds. This is a disgrace to lives and money!”
The controversy surrounding the fire did not end that season. After a phone call with Newsom in 2020, Trump ultimately approved federal aid to California that the Trump administration had initially rejected. Mr. Newsom publicly thanked Mr. Trump for approving the funds. But this year, Trump again threatened to withhold disaster relief money from states.
Trump made comments earlier this month at his golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, over a lawsuit filed by the state that violates a Trump-era rule that proposed sending more water to farmers in the state. , threatened Mr. Newsom.
Trump called Newsom “Newscam” and said, “If he doesn’t sign these papers, we won’t give him the money to put out all the fires.”
“And if we don’t give him the funds to put out the fires, he’s going to have a problem,” Trump said. “He’s a terrible governor.”
In a text message exchange, Newsom did not respond to a question about whether he learned why the funds were released in 2020, but Trump has said that after several natural disasters, he personally He recalled that he expected to be treated with respect.
He “threats in public, plays his agenda, puts on a tough face, makes phone calls, forces ‘deals’ in his head, and tries to figure out who’s in charge and why he matters.” along the way,” Newsom wrote.
California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House at the time, occasionally nagged Mr. Trump about providing disaster funding to states, a person briefed on the matter said on condition of anonymity. It is said that
Trump has tended to treat political allies with more respect and goodwill after disasters. When tornadoes struck Alabama in March 2019, he posted a message on Twitter promising “positive treatment” from the federal government for the Trump-leaning state.
“Neither Kamala Harris nor Joe Biden are anywhere to be seen,” campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in a statement, referring to Trump’s visit to Georgia on Monday. She accused Biden of a “total lack of White House leadership in a time of crisis.”
Former administration officials, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about private discussions while working for the former president, say the president treats disaster funds the same way he treats other funding sources within the government. He said he sometimes handled it. He acted as he saw fit depending on how he was personally treated.
He also didn’t seem to understand, or didn’t want to understand, that some emergency funding cuts were beyond his ability, according to people with direct knowledge of the discussions. Another person with direct knowledge of the discussions said Mr. Trump was hoping for clemency from governors to help states.
This went against the process by which funding was supposed to be approved. It starts with the governor and as a request to FEMA, which then goes through the Office of Management and Budget and the National Security Council. From there, it goes to the White House staff secretary and then to the president, at which point it’s a token approval.
Trump has made it clear throughout his presidency that he wanted to receive personal thanks from governors, but especially during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, when supplies such as ventilators and personal protective equipment are in short supply, officials said. It is said that each governor was competing for lifesaving equipment.
But some former officials said that behind the scenes and off camera, Mr. Trump was sympathetic to those affected by the national disaster. Thomas P. Bossert, Trump’s first homeland security adviser, said it would be reductive to conclude that Trump was blind to the work of disaster relief agencies or indifferent to the way they operated. .
“I think it’s unfair,” Bossert said, adding that he believes Trump helped change thinking about the agency.
“I think President Trump cared about the impact those storms were having on people. You could probably question his motives. Maybe it was for their votes, or maybe their “Was it for happiness?” he said, adding that this was not the case. Trump’s attitude towards the public should not change. He said he believed the federal government’s response to Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas and Louisiana in August 2017, was well managed.
Trump’s visit to South Georgia on Monday comes at a pivotal time in the presidential campaign, when the state is critical to his re-election chances. The former president reiterated in his speech that he had brought gifts to help with the disaster response: a semi-trailer truck and a gas tanker loaded with relief supplies distributed by the evangelical Christian humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse. Ta.
Still, just before highlighting his contributions to storm response efforts and repeating the false claim that he couldn’t reach Biden by phone, the former president said he would refrain from discussing the shaky politics surrounding his trip. .
“It doesn’t matter when there’s a crisis, when your fellow citizens cry out for help, it doesn’t matter,” Trump said. “We’re not talking politics right now.”
Kitty Bennett contributed to the research.
