Trump claims FEMA is getting ‘in the way’ and pitches abolishing it during first interview since return to White House
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Trump wants to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency and let states handle their own disaster needs. President Donald Trump on Wednesday floated abolishing the federal agency charged with the response to all kinds of natural disasters and other emergencies and leave the task of responding to emergencies up to individual state governments instead.
Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity in his first television interview since he was sworn in for his second term on Monday, Trump repeated false claims made during the election by online activists who alleged that the Biden administration did not send federal resources to North Carolina after a pair of hurricanes hit the state last fall.
He blamed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has been the point agency for federal disaster response since its’ creation during the Carter administration. “The Democrats don’t care about North Carolina. What they’ve done with FEMA is so bad. FEMA is a whole other discussion, because all it does is complicate everything. FEMA has not done their job for the last four years,” said Trump, who added that the agency, which has been part of the Department of Homeland Security since 2003, had been “working really well” before he left office.
“Unless you have certain types of leadership, it really gets in the way,” he said of the federal agency. Continuing, Trump told Hannity that FEMA should “be a whole big discussion very shortly” and said he’d prefer ending the agency’s federal mission and making individual states responsible for dealing with natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other matters normally handled by FEMA.
