President Donald Trump traveled to North Carolina on Friday and is en route to California to make his first presidential visits to states ravaged by disasters that he has sought to politicize.
On the first leg of his trip, Trump flew to Asheville, North Carolina, to tour sites struck by Hurricane Helene in September. At the time, Trump spread baseless conspiracy theories about relief efforts, claiming (among other things) that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was redirecting aid meant for hurricane victims to undocumented immigrants.
On Friday, he again criticized FEMA, saying that he plans to sign an executive order to reform the agency but also raising the possibility of “getting rid of FEMA” entirely. Trump suggested that states should handle recovery efforts from such disasters on their own instead of relying on the federal agency, which he said “just hasn’t done the job.”
Trump is scheduled to arrive later on Friday in California, where massive wildfires have spread across the Los Angeles area. It’s unclear if he will visit the neighborhoods devastated by the blazes alongside California Gov. Gavin Newsom, with whom he has publicly sparred over the fires.
Trump has falsely claimed that the state’s efforts to protect wildlife have hindered water access in Southern California, and he has blamed the fires on Democratic lawmakers’ incompetence. In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Trump suggested withholding federal aid to California.
“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water run down,” he said. Speaking to reporters in North Carolina on Friday, Trump again suggested imposing conditions on aid to California, a Democratic-majority state. “I have a condition. In California, we want them to have voter ID so the people have a voice, because right now, the people don’t have a voice because you don’t know who’s voting, and it’s very corrupt,” he said. “If they released the water when I told them to — because I told them to do it seven years ago — if they would’ve done it, you wouldn’t have had the problem.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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