'Outrageous abuse of power': Governor slams Trump for withholding aid after criticism

A new report describes how former President Donald Trump routinely denied federal disaster aid money to states whose governors either criticized him or declared President Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election. And he didn't discriminate between Democratic and Republican critics.

Politico's E&E News reported Thursday that when natural disasters hit states led by governors Trump disliked, he either withheld, delayed or outright denied aid for political reasons. In 2020, when Washington state was affected by wildfires, Democratic Governor Jay Inslee requested $37 million in aid for the affected areas. But even though the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) found that the Evergreen State's wildfires met the threshold for a federal disaster, Trump sat on the request for the final four months of presidency, only approving it just prior to leaving office.

"It really was an outrageous abuse of power," Inslee told E&E.

Inslee, who unsuccessfully sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, had previously criticized the ex-president's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic when he said the federal response to the virus would "be more successful if the Trump administration stuck to the science and told the truth." Trump bristled at the critique, and called the governor a "snake" and a "nasty person."

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Two days before Inslee requested federal assistance, he slammed the former president's "reckless statements" about global warming and his "gutting of environmental policies." The irony of Trump withholding aid to Washington state is that even though it's considered safe Democratic territory in presidential elections, the wildfires primarily affected the eastern part of the state, which is solidly Republican.

While Washington state eventually got aid money from the federal government, the Trump administration didn't send any aid at all to Maryland after Republican Governor Larry Hogan requested it. Hogan — who also criticized Trump's oversight during the pandemic and bought 500,000 Covid tests from South Korea — sought federal money to recover from a tropical storm that FEMA said met the disaster threshold. However, Trump never officially approved his November 12 request. Trump attacked the Republican governor from his official Twitter (now X) account, labeled him a RINO [Republican in name only] and said he was "just as bad as the flawed tests he paid big money for!"

Biden ultimately approved the aid request in February of 2021. However, the damage had already been done. Russell Strickland, the director of the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, said the "delay [in receiving aid] caused us to miss opportunities" to better protect residents against future natural disasters.

"Citizens do not have the ability to wait months to receive assistance and return to their homes and businesses," Strickland said.

Utah Republican Governor Gary Herbert also experienced Trump's vindictiveness when he requested federal aid in October of 2020 for a series of destructive storms. Even though FEMA estimated the storms more than surpassed the threshold to qualify for assistance, the former president still took 97 days before finally approving Herbert's request. Notably, Herbert was one of the first Republican elected officials to recognize Biden as the winner of the 2020 election, and denounced his state's Republican attorney general for adding his name to an effort to overturn election results.

E&E's report is particularly noteworthy as Trump has baselessly accused Biden of failing to adequately respond to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. In reality, governors from both parties praised the Biden administration for rapidly declaring federal emergencies in the affected states in order to expedite the deployment of federal resources to the hardest-hit areas. Even Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto called Trump's claims about Biden's hurricane relief efforts "wrong" and "bull."

Click here to E&E's report in its entirety.