FLETCHER, N.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to “get rid of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, offering the latest sign of how he is weighing sweeping changes to the central organization of the country to respond to disasters.
Watch Trump’s remarks in the player above.
Speaking on the first trip of his second term, Trump made the comment in North Carolina during a briefing on the months-long recovery from Hurricane Helene.
“FEMA has been a very big disappointment,” the Republican president said. “It’s very bureaucratic. And it’s very slow. Other than that, we are very happy with them. »
Trump said Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee, would help coordinate recovery efforts in the state, where frustrations from the storm continue to linger. Whatley is a native of North Carolina but does not hold an official government position.
While Trump has emphasized his desire to help North Carolina, a battleground state that has voted for him in all of his presidential campaigns, he was far less generous toward California, where he plans to visit ravaged Los Angeles by forest fires later today.
Trump reiterated that he wanted to extract concessions from the Democratic-run state in exchange for disaster assistance, including changes to water policies and requirements that voters must show identification when voting on ballot papers.
Beyond Trump’s criticism of FEMA, he suggested a dramatic overhaul of the federal government’s role in disaster response.
“I would like to see states take care of disasters,” he said after landing in the Asheville area. “Let the state take care of tornadoes and hurricanes and all the other things that happen.”
Trump said it would be faster than sending in FEMA.
“FEMA simply didn’t do the job,” the president said. “We’re looking at the whole concept of FEMA.”
The agency helps respond to disasters when local leaders request a presidential emergency declaration, a signal that the damage is beyond the state’s ability to handle alone. FEMA can reimburse governments for recovery efforts such as debris removal, and it offers stopgap financial assistance to individual residents. Some of Trump’s conservative allies have proposed reducing the amount of money the agency would have to provide.
Trump criticized former President Joe Biden for his administration’s response to Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. As he left the White House Friday morning, he told reporters that “it’s been a horrible thing the way this has been allowed to transmit” since the storm in September, and “we’re going to fix it.” .
After briefing recovery efforts, Trump traveled to a small town outside Asheville to meet with residents who were helped by Samaritan’s Purse, a humanitarian organization led by evangelical leader Franklin Graham .
Once in California, Trump plans to visit the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where rows of homes burned to the ground. He is expected to receive a briefing on the fires, which are ongoing, with thousands of people under evacuation orders.
Trump showered California leaders with disdain for water policies that falsely claimed to have worsened recent watersheds. He said he would “take a look at a fire that could have been put out if they let the water run, but they didn’t let the water run.”
Members of Congress will be at the briefing and the meeting could prove controversial. Trump has suggested using federal disaster assistance as a bargaining chip during unrelated legislative negotiations over government borrowing, or as an effect in persuading California to change its water policies.
“Playing politics with people’s livelihoods is unacceptable and a slap in the face to Southern California’s wildfire victims and our brave first responders,” said Rep. Young Kim, a D-County Republican. ‘Orange, south of Los Angeles, in a recent statement.
Trump has a history of injecting politics and lies in disaster response. During his first term, he talked about limiting aid to Democratic states that didn’t support him, according to former administration officials. While running for president last year, he claimed without evidence that Democrats “went out of their way not to help people in Republican areas” of the battleground state of North Carolina .
He also focused on California’s water policies, particularly fish conservation efforts in the northern part of the state.
“I don’t think we should give anything to California before we let the water flow,” Trump said Wednesday in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity.
LEARN MORE: Trump slams California water policy before touring LA fire damage
The president also suggested shifting more responsibility to individual states for disaster management.
“I’d rather see states take care of their own problems,” he told Hannity, adding that “FEMA gets in the way of everything.”
Michael Coen, who served as FEMA chief of staff during the Biden administration, said Trump was “misinformed” about an agency that provides critical aid to states when they are overwhelmed by disaster.
Additionally, Coen criticized the idea of attaching chains to aid.
“You’re going to pick winners and losers on which communities are going to be supported by the federal government,” he said. “I think the American people expect the federal government to be there for them on their worst day, no matter where they live.”
The last time Trump was president, he visited many disaster zones, including the aftermath of hurricanes and tornadoes. He has sometimes attracted criticism, as when he discarded paper towels to survivors of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
“If you’re a disaster survivor, no matter who you voted for, it’s always good when the president comes to town,” said Pete Gaynor, who led FEMA during the first Trump administration between 2019 and 2021. “You can see him and see him and I hope to talk to him about what you need in your community.
Laurie Carpenter, a 62-year-old retiree in Newland, North Carolina, said she was looking forward to Trump’s visit because she was disappointed by the federal response. She said there was still debris and trash strewn around her part of the state months after Hurricane Helene.
“If someone wants to do something, I think they’ll do it,” Carpenter said.
Trump tapped Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL with limited experience handling natural disasters, as acting FEMA director. He also said individual states should be responsible for leading the response to natural disasters rather than FEMA, and that the federal government should only step in afterward to provide funding.
Biden promised before leaving office that the federal government will cover all costs of responding to wildfires around Los Angeles, which could end up being the costliest natural disasters in American history. However, this promise will only be kept if Congress cannot find more funding.
Friday’s trip could provoke uncomfortable conversations about climate change, which Trump has played up and denied. Hurricane Helene and the Los Angeles wildfires were both exacerbated by global warming.
In Helen’s case, a study by international climatologists of global weather attribution found that climate change increased the storm’s rainfall by 10%. In California, the state suffered a record fall and a dry winter – its traditional wet season – which made the area around Los Angeles more vulnerable to flames.
“It just breaks our comfort zone of what’s supposed to be normal,” said University of Oregon researcher Amanda Stasiewicz.
After visiting North Carolina and California, Trump plans to hold a rally Saturday in Las Vegas.
Associated Press writers Stephen Groves, Seth Borenstein and Makiya Semineraa contributed to this report.