Donald Trump tosses paper towels into a crowd in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, after Hurricane Maria.Evan Vucci/AP
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Donald Trump deliberately withheld disaster aid to states he deemed politically hostile to him as president and will do so again unimpeded if he returns to the White House, several former Trump administration officials have warned.
As Hurricane Helene and then Hurricane Milton ravaged the southeastern US over the past two weeks, Trump has sought to pin blame upon Joe Biden’s administration for a ponderous response to the disasters, even suggesting that this was deliberate, due to the number of Republican voters affected by the storms.
But former Trump administration officials have said the former president, when in office, initially refused to release federal disaster aid for wildfires in California in 2018, withheld wildfire assistance for Washington state in 2020, and severely restricted emergency relief to Puerto Rico in the wake of the devastating Hurricane Maria in 2017 because he felt these places were not sufficiently supportive of him.
“Trump absolutely didn’t want to give aid to California or Puerto Rico purely for partisan politics—because they didn’t vote for him.”
The revelations, first reported upon by E&E News, have raised major doubts over what Trump’s response to disasters would be should he win next month’s presidential election. The former president has already been criticized for his role in spreading misinformation about Helene and Milton that has allegedly slowed the disaster response and even led to online death threats against Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) staff and meteorologists.
“Trump absolutely didn’t want to give aid to California or Puerto Rico purely for partisan politics—because they didn’t vote for him,” said Kevin Carroll, former senior counselor to Homeland Security secretary John Kelly during Trump’s term. Carroll said Kelly, later the president’s chief of staff, had to “twist Trump’s arm” to get him to........