Trump Promises Overhaul Of FEMA, Floats ‘Getting Rid Of’ Agency

 President Donald Trump said Friday that he might sign an executive order to “get rid” of FEMA and hand over the responsibility of responding to natural disasters to the states. 

Trump made the comments during a visit to Asheville, North Carolina, where he met with victims of Hurricane Helene and teased an executive order to completely overhaul FEMA. Western North Carolina was devastated last year when Hurricane Helene brought record flooding to the area, destroying homes and killing more than 100 people. 

“I’ll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think, frankly, FEMA is not good,” Trump said. “I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to … use your state to fix it and not waste time.”

Trump said FEMA made disaster recovery more inefficient since it went into unfamiliar areas and introduced rules that slowed down the process. He said it would be better if states were in total control of recovery efforts and the federal government would fund a certain percentage of the response. 

“I think we’re going recommend that FEMA go away, and we pay directly, we pay a percentage to the state. But the state should fix this,” Trump said. 

Trump has been very critical of FEMA’s response to both Hurricanes Helene and Milton, saying that the agency slowed its response because many of those impacted were in conservative rural areas. 

“We’re looking at the whole concept of FEMA,” he said. “FEMA has really let us down. Let the country down.”

“We’re going to fix it, and we’re going to fix it as fast as you can,” he added. “It’s a massive amount of damage. FEMA has 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. We’re going to do a good job.”

 

He promised that the government would “do a lot” for North Carolina after he said the response under Biden was “very slow.” 

In November, The Daily Wire broke a story about how a FEMA supervisor in Florida ordered relief workers responding to Hurricane Milton to “avoid homes advertising Trump.” That prompted the employee to be fired and a wave of investigations into the agency.

One whistleblower later told Republicans on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure that FEMA had skipped entire neighborhoods in North Carolina if there were three or more signs showing support for Trump or other conservatives.

Trump heads to Los Angeles County later on Friday to see the destruction caused by multiple fires that have displaced more than 100,000 residents.