President Donald Trump questioned the Federal Emergency Management Agency's future in an interview on Wednesday, saying he'd prefer "the states take care of their own problems."
He made the comments in an exclusive interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity.
Why It Matters
Trump has enacted sweeping changes across the federal government since taking office on Monday, including enabling law enforcement to crack down on migrants' arrests, reportedly freezing the Justice Department's civil rights division and seeking to end birthright citizenship.
His comments about FEMA come as California battles a series of raging wildfires that have ravaged Los Angeles and Ventura counties, killing dozens of people and destroying thousands of homes and buildings.
What To Know
"FEMA is a whole another discussion, because all it does is complicate everything," Trump said after saying that the California wildfires have "changed everything."
"I will say that Los Angeles has changed everything because 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," Trump began.
"North Carolina, too," Hannity said, referring to the hurricane and catastrophic flooding that ravaged the state last year, which North Carolina is still recovering from.
"Well, they don't care about North Carolina," Trump countered. "The Democrats don't care about North Carolina. What they've done with FEMA is so bad."
"FEMA has not done their job for the last four years," the president continued. "You know, I had FEMA working really well. We had hurricanes in Florida, we had Alabama, tornadoes, we had—but unless you have certain types of leadership, it's really, it gets in the way."
Newsweek reached out to a White House spokesperson via email Wednesday night for comment.
Trump went on to reiterate that FEMA "is going to be a whole big discussion" because he would "rather see the states take care of their own problems."
"If they have a tornado some place and if they let that state—Oklahoma is very competent," Trump said, before going on a tangent about how he won the state in the 2024 election.
"If they get hit with a tornado or something, let Oklahoma fix it ... and then the federal government can help them out with the money," Trump said.
The president went on to falsely claim Democrats "actually used FEMA not to help North Carolina."
"That makes no sense–" Hannity began, before Trump cut him off.
"So, I'm stopping, on Friday, I'm stopping in North Carolina," the president said. "First stop."
This story is developing and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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