President Donald Trump said he plans to tap Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Michael Whatley to oversee disaster relief efforts in North Carolina.
Trump detailed his plan at a press conference in North Carolina, where he is inspecting the damage inflicted by Hurricane Helene in September:
We’re going to work together with the governor. We’re going to work together with the senators, but really we’re going to work a lot with your congressmen, especially the three that are in the area, and Michael Whatley. And I’d like to put Michael in charge of making sure everything goes well.
Trump referred to the members of Congress whose districts he noted were most severely affected by Hurricane Helene: Rep. Virginia Foxx (R) of the Fifth Congressional District, Chuck Edwards (R) of the Eleventh Congressional District, and Tim Moore (R) of the Fourteenth Congressional District.
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“I’ll be taking strong action to get North Carolina the support that you need to quickly recover and rebuild. We’re working on it very hard,” Trump said later in the press conference.
“I think if Michael Whatley does half as good a job for North Carolina as he did for my campaign, we’ll be very happy,” he added.
Trump also noted that he is considering substantial reforms to FEMA, including possibly eliminating it altogether. He floated a system in which the federal government provides states with funds to manage disasters rather than FEMA handling disaster relief.
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“I think, frankly, FEMA is not good. I think when you have a problem like this…whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA,” Trump said.
“And then FEMA gets here, and they don’t know the area, they’ve never been to the area, and they want to give you rules that you’ve never heard about. They want to bring people that aren’t as good as the people you already have,” he added.
Trump went on to pitch his idea of providing states with federal dollars so they can oversee disaster relief themselves.
“I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away, and we pay directly, and we pay a percentage to the state,” he said.
Trump will visit California later Friday to inspect wildfire damage in Los Angeles County.
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