Posted on Monday, January 27, 2025
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by Andrew Shirley
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54 Comments
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To cap off one of the most extraordinary first weeks of any administration in American history, President Donald Trump traveled to disaster zones in North Carolina and California on Friday to receive an update from officials on the ground – and demand that more be done to help victims.
The fact that Trump visited two states on opposite sides of the country in one day is a breath of fresh air following four years in which Biden rarely strayed from the White House or his Delaware home. Americans will no doubt remember that it took Biden more than a year to visit the site of the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and weeks to travel to Hawaii when wildfires ripped through the historic town of Lahaina.
When Hurricane Helene devastated the Southeast last September, it was also then-candidate Donald Trump, not President Joe Biden, who was first on the scene. The contrast in leadership could not have been starker – as Trump was comforting flood victims, Biden was sequestered in the White House while Kamala Harris was attending a swanky fundraiser in San Francisco.
During that visit four months ago, Trump pledged that he would not forget the people affected by Helene, many of whom are still without permanent housing. Even before he arrived in North Carolina on Friday, he was already making good on that promise, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announcing a two-month extension of temporary housing for displaced residents.
Trump also said on Friday that he plans to overhaul FEMA, which has drawn criticism for its handling of the Helene response. “We’re going to fix it, and we’re going to fix it as fast as we can,” Trump stated. “It’s a massive amount of damage. FEMA has really let us down. Let the country down. And I don’t know if that’s Biden’s fault or whose fault it is, but we’re going to take over. We’re going to do a good job.”
To start that overhaul, Trump tapped Cameron Hamilton as interim director of FEMA. Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL who has been a vocal critic of FEMA’s response in North Carolina, has already pledged to investigate the agency’s failures.
But for Trump, it’s not just about ensuring a better response to future disasters – it’s also about giving a voice to those who felt forgotten and abandoned under the Biden administration. In a moment that perfectly encapsulated his compassion for these everyday Americans, Trump handed over his press conference to victims on Friday, allowing them to tell their stories on national television. In one case, Trump even encouraged a father holding his young daughter, both of them bundled up against the January cold, to name the insurance company that had refused him a payout.
A few hours later, in Los Angeles, Trump again displayed empathy and compassion for victims of the wildfires that have devastated America’s second-largest city – while also not hesitating to criticize city and state officials for their failures.
During a roundtable discussion on the response to the blazes which have displaced more than 150,000 people in Southern California, Trump demanded that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass – who was sitting just feet away from him – use her emergency powers to allow residents to return to their homes.
“I just think you have to allow the people to go on their site and start the process tonight,” Trump told Bass, to which she responded, “We want people to be safe” and suggested that residents may be able to return to their burned homes in about a week.
“I watched hundreds of people standing in front of their lots, and they’re not allowed to go in,” Trump retorted. “It’s all burned. It’s gone, it’s done. Nothing’s going to happen… You have emergency powers, just like I do, and I’m exercising my emergency powers. You have to exercise them also.”
In reprimanding Bass, Trump echoed outraged residents looking on at the exchange and shouting protests. “We can’t even see our homes right now!” one local woman complained. As one user put it on X, “Trump is literally arguing with the mayor of LA for the betterment of the people of California, on live TV. How can anyone side with her? Trump is truly a man of the people. Thank God we have him.”
Trump also announced that he would waive federal permits to expedite rebuilding while pressuring Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom to do the same. Permitting, in particular, has become a top concern as reconstruction efforts begin, as the Golden State has some of the nation’s most strict and complicated building codes.
The fact that Trump chose two disaster zones for the first official trip of his second term is, in many ways, a fitting symbol of the mission that voters elected him to accomplish. The last four years have left the country in tatters, from the wide-open border to the faltering economy and chaos abroad. However, as Trump has shown in North Carolina and California, he is determined to face any problem head-on, and he’s not afraid to call out anyone who stands between him and serving the American people.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
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