President Donald Trump ‘bait and switched' North Carolina voters on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) aid they received, and some Hurricane Helene survivors are angry at his recent moves, according to a Politico special report.
During the campaign, Trump made several claims about why the people affected by the extreme flooding were not receiving aid. He claimed that “the Biden administration was diverting FEMA assistance from North Carolina to house illegal immigrants.” He also said, “$1 billion of FEMA spending was ‘stolen’ for migrants.”
Most notably on the campaign trail, Trump said, “all FEMA had to offer people in North Carolina was $750.” Politico said these claims were “misinformation,” “baseless,” and “not true.”
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Once he became President, Trump said, “I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away.”
The agency has also “halted $10 billion in disaster relief funds intended to help people across the country, cut off housing assistance for thousands of Helene survivors,” Politico also added FEMA has “ended a policy of fully reimbursing the state of North Carolina for debris removal.”
“Whatever the policy merits of Trump’s disaster-relief plans, they feel like a bait and switch to some people struggling to recover from Helene,” the outlet wrote. “After blaming Biden for faltering relief efforts, Trump has seemed more focused on trashing FEMA than boosting the recovery in North Carolina.”
Now, residents are lashing out at the president. Travis Gresham spoke with Politico and accused Trump of “setting FEMA up to fail.”
“He knew what he was doing,” said Gresham, who often votes for Democratic candidates. “He was setting the stage for what his agenda was: That FEMA is a joke. It’s not a good system, but I don’t think there’s a plan to fix it or overhaul it and make it better. I think it’s a plan to eliminate it.”
“If you take the boots off the ground here the people are not going to try to get the help. The help will be over,” Gresham added. “I don’t think we will ever recover here. Not fully.”