Cnn
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President Donald Trump is expected to go to Northern Carolina on Friday – a state which, according to him, “was abandoned by the Democrats” while he rebuilds after the floods of Hurgagan Hélène – with questions on help in the emergency services Case of disaster in the center of his first days of return to power.
Trump will then go to California, where forest fires have ravaged the Los Angeles region, while Capitol Republicans are starting to sail between the desire of the Conservatives to reduce Trump’s expenses and promises to help the two places rebuild.
This trip will be Trump’s first outside of Washington since his inauguration on Monday.
By visiting the North Carolina, a pivotal state that he won three times, the president seeks to establish clear contrasts with former president Joe Biden, whose flood management he qualified by his administration as “so bad” , and the Democratic leaders of California, including the management of the crisis. Forest fires he has castigated several times.
In an interview given Wednesday in Sean Hannity of Fox News, Trump said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “bothered everything” in North Carolina and – without explaining how – said that the Democrats had used the agency “To not help”.
“I stop in North Carolina – first stop, because these people were very badly treated by the Democrats,” said Trump. “And I stop there, we will solve this problem, because they still suffer from a hurricane of months ago.”
FEMA claims that around 13,000 households from western North Carolina used its transitional shelter assistance program – and an agency official declared on a letter to the Democratic Governor Josh Stein on Sunday that She extended the program until May 26. However, some displaced residents who spoke to CNN declared that they were uncertain about their future and frustrated by the difficulties in obtaining rapid answers on the types of aid to which they are entitled and the date on which this aid ends .
Immediately after the floods caused by the hurricane, an unprecedented amount of false information circulated on the storm and the response of the federal government, in particular affirmations according to which the FEMA funds were directed to migrant services instead of efforts recovery and statements that survivors were only eligible for $ 750 of aid. . Trump has amplified many of these false claims.
He is now taking the road after also focusing on help in the event of a disaster and how to finance it at its meeting on Tuesday with the Republican leaders of the Chamber and the Senate.
Trump has talked a long time about California aid and North Carolina disasters – as well as the way and the opportunity to finance what should represent billions of dollars in emergency, said a person present in the room .
However, while the Republicans now control the two chambers of the congress and the conservatives demand that the expenses be limited, Trump and the leaders of the Congress will also have to find means to compensate for the expenses related to the help in the event of a disaster.
Several GOP leaders stressed at the meeting on Tuesday that they were to be “aware of the way we pay the bills,” said the person in the room.
The president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, said, according to the participants, about the next congress: “We must control our expenses”.
Trump and Johnson both criticized water management in California, and Johnson said that legislators could impose conditions on help in the event of a disaster for the State. Several Republicans who won tight races in the Chamber in California have pushed back, notably the representative Young Kim, who represents a battlefield district in the County of Orange.
“We cannot do policy with the means of subsistence of the Americans,” said Kim on Thursday. “If more federal aid is necessary to support the first stakeholders in the fight against forest fires, we must achieve.”
Trump seeks to have a large part of his program adopted in the Capitol as part of a bill on reconciliation spending. He told journalists on Tuesday that he thought that requests for helping Democrats for the Los Angeles region would make the adoption of this “simpler” major bill.
“They are going to need a lot of money and, in general, I think many democrats are going to ask for help,” said Trump.
In the interview with Hannity, he said that even if the Democrats are looking for federal aid for California, they “do not care” either from North Carolina.
The president also gave an overview of what he says is a broader debate on the role of FEMA and the federal government in disaster management.
He said that FEMA “has not done its job in the past four years” and that the agency “is a whole different discussion, because all that it does is all complicated”.
“It bothers,” said Trump. “And FEMA will be the subject of a great debate very soon, because I prefer to see the States dealing with their own problems.”
CNN contacted FEMA about Trump’s comments.