President Donald Trump touched down on Friday in hurricane-battered western North Carolina and wasted little time sending a heartfelt message to Americans in desperate need of help.
Trump told reporters that he wanted to visit North Carolina before California because the people in the Tarheel state had been abused and forgotten about by the Biden administration.
Trump tore into the “mismanagement” of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) after landing in North Carolina and vowed to “take over” Hurricane Helene’s recovery to ensure that the federal funds are properly spent.
Back in September, Hurricane Helene decimated western North Carolina resulting in 219 fatalities and nearly $80 billion in damages.
“I’m stopping in North Carolina first because they’ve been abused by what’s happened. I mean, it’s terrible. It should have been done. It should have been — a lot of things should have happened that didn’t happen. So we’re here. We’re going to fix it. We’re working with the gentlemen behind me and you know who they are and we’re going to fix it and we’re going to fix it as fast as you can. It’s a massive amount of damage,” Trump told reporters.
“FEMA really let us down, let the country down. And I don’t know if that’s Biden’s fault or whose fault it is, but we’re going to take over and we’re going to do a good job. We’re going to assign Mr. Whatley, who’s fantastic, frankly, and the governor and everybody else that’s going to work. We’re going to supply the money to — supply a lot of the money, maybe you have to chip in something, you chip in a little something like maybe 25% or whatever. But we’re going to get it done as quickly as we can. And we want to take care of the people of North Carolina,” the president added.
“It’s so interesting. Everybody’s talking about California and that’s a mess. But I said, I’m not going to California until I stop in North Carolina. So here we are. We’re going to go visit the site and we’re going to work with probably three of the congressmen, Republican congressmen, who’ve been fantastic, whose areas have been affected. And with Michael Whatley, the governor, and whoever else is, you know, we decide to get involved, probably less FEMA because it just hasn’t done the job,” Trump continued.
“And we’re looking at the whole concept of FEMA. I like, frankly, the concept when North Carolina gets it, the governor takes care of it. When Florida gets hit, the governor takes care of it. Meaning if the state takes care of it, you have a group of people come in from an area that don’t even know where they’re going in order to solve immediately a problem is something that never worked for me, but this is probably one of the best examples of it not working and there’s been some others like it in Louisiana, etc. So we’re going to be doing something on FEMA that I think most people agree,” he declared.
Trump concluded, “I’d like to see the states take care of disasters, let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen. And I think you’re going to find it a lot less expensive. You’ll do it for less than half and you’re going to get a lot quicker response. So that seems to be the recommendation, but we’ll be making that recommendation over the next couple of weeks. We’re going to go to the site now and we’re going to figure out a plan for really demolition and cleaning because not a lot’s been done. And we’re very disappointed in the Biden administration, but we’re going to make up for lost time.”
Using the first trip of his second administration, Trump traveled to areas where politics have influenced the response to catastrophic catastrophes on Friday, visiting wildfire-ravaged Los Angeles and hurricane-battered North Carolina.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration’s response to Hurricane Helene in North Carolina has drawn criticism from the Republican president.
Trump told reporters as he was leaving the White House that “we’re going to get it fixed up” and that “it’s been a horrible thing the way that’s been allowed to fester” since the hurricane struck in September.
Additionally, Trump has called out California authorities for water restrictions that he wrongly claimed made the latest fires worse.
“I would like to examine a fire that could have been extinguished if they had allowed the water to flow, but they did not,” he stated.
Following a briefing on recovery efforts in North Carolina, Trump will visit a tiny village outside of Asheville to speak with locals who have benefited from the work of Samaritan’s Purse, a humanitarian organization led by Franklin Graham, an evangelical leader.
