This is a must-watch bit from Chris Hayes’s show last night. Trump has a long history of being absolutely astonished that there are such things as natural disasters. Who could have known?
See also Trump and Noem’s attacks on FEMA blew up in the most predictable way. The plan had been to abolish FEMA and expect states to take care of their own disaster relief. Apparently this is being re-thought. I’m not sure Trump is capable of remembering what he is supposed to be re-thinking from one hour to the next, though.
Let us not forget how he cut the pandemic early warning program before the Covid pandemic. Trump’s standard plan is to wait until there’s a fire, and then if no one else puts it out he’ll maybe start organizing a fire department. While being astonished (note accordion movements with his hands) that there are such things as fires. Nobody ever saw a house burn down before!
I’ve read that the flood in Kerr County, Texas, was in a 100-year flood zone. This means the chance of a flood in any given year is very small, but not nonexistent.
And file this one under What the Bleep Is Wrong With These People?
A Texas county devastated by deadly flooding earlier this month rejected federal funds in 2021 that could have helped install a flood warning system, with local officials and residents arguing they didn’t want to be “bought” by the Biden administration.
As far back as 2016, officials considered a $1 million siren and gauge system to warn both locals and the flood-prone region’s many visitors, the Texas Tribune reported. But despite multiple meetings and FEMA grant applications, funding efforts repeatedly stalled, first due to missing mitigation plans, then due to shifting priorities after Hurricane Harvey.
In 2021, the Biden administration awarded Kerr County $10.2 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, which could have been used for flood prevention infrastructure. But commissioners, facing political pressure from conservative residents, opted not to pursue a warning system.
At an April 2022 meeting, one citizen called the White House a “criminal treasonous communist government,” urging the county to reject the money altogether. Others echoed that sentiment, saying they didn’t want the federal government’s help.
“We don’t want to be bought by the federal government, thank you very much,” a resident said. “We’d like the federal government to stay out of Kerr County and their money.”
While the county ultimately kept the funds, they allocated the majority, about $8 million, to sheriff’s department upgrades and public employee stipends.
Sometimes the government isn’t the problem, folks. And sometimes it is. Secretary Gnome is doing a terrible job. FEMA is much less useful because of her.
(I saw her name spelled Gnome in a chryon a few days ago. So that’s her name now.)
We know that there will be tornadoes and hurricanes this summer. There will be wildfires. There could be more floods. There could be earthquakes. I understand the New Madrid Seismic Zone has been acting up lately. We don’t know exactly what will happen,, but these things do happen. Hurricanes and tornadoes in particular always hipper, somewhere in the U.S., every year. Yet they catch Trump completely by surprise, as if he never heard of such things before. .
Update: Steve Bannon is telling his followers that the GOP could lose 40 House seats over the Epstein files sideshow. Not over stripping health care from millions of people or slowing up the deficit on tax cuts for the rich or anything else they’ve been up to. Bleeping Jeffrey Epstein. They’re like children.