Topline
President Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency and suggested he wants to have a discussion soon on its future, continuing his attack on the federal disaster response agency, which he and other GOP leaders have accused of being biased against Republicans.
Key Facts
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity from the Oval Office, Trump addressed the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles, before saying: “FEMA is gonna be a whole big discussion very shortly.”
The president said he’d “rather see the states take care of their own problems.”
Trump attacked FEMA, saying the agency has not done its “job for the last four years,” and suggested Democrats did not care about disasters in states like North Carolina, but are eager to get federal support to deal with the Los Angeles fires.
He then claimed FEMA was “working really well” under his previous administration, but said “unless you have certain types of leadership, it’s really– it gets in the way,” before reiterating “FEMA is getting in the way of everything.”
As an example of how a disaster response would work without the agency, Trump said if a state like Oklahoma gets hit by a tornado, they should be allowed to “fix it” themselves and the federal government can “help them with the money.”
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What Trump Said About The La Fires?
Addressing the LA Fires, Trump said “a lot of money is going to be necessary for Los Angeles and a lot of people on the other side want that to happen,” refering to the Democrats. The president then reiterated his claim that California’s fish conservation efforts in the north of the state were to blame for the water shortages that have hampered the firefighting efforts. He added, “I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down.”
What Else Did Trump Speak About In The Interview?
This was Trump’s first sit-down interview since taking office earlier this week. He discussed various issues including his sweeping pardons for people convicted for the Jan. 6 riots and former President Joe Biden’s pardons for his family. When Hannity asked him about pardoning people convicted of violence against police, Trump said: “They were in there for three-and-a-half years, a long time, and many in solitary confinement, treated like nobody’s ever been treated…like the worst criminals in history.” He then added that most people he pardoned were innocent and many had served “horribly, a long time” and it would be “very, very cumbersome to go and look” at each of the 1,500 people’s convictions. On Biden’s pardons for his family members, Trump said the former president set an “unbelievable precedent” for him to follow. “This guy went around giving everybody pardons, and you know, the funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon. If you look at it, it all had to do with him,” the president added.
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