MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump screwing over voters in red states by destroying FEMA and Meiselas speaks with Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz about the dangers on the horizon by Trump’s actions. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the consequences of Trump's actions on FEMA?
If we can send missiles overseas, why can't we send money to help us, Arkansas? Now Kentucky got hit this past weekend. My opinion is your priority is your home.
Your priority is your home and the money should be reaching your states. But Donald Trump's FEMA is MIA. And that shouldn't surprise us because Donald Trump has stated and his Homeland Security Secretary, cosplayer, dog killer, Kristi Noem, has also stated that they want to get rid of it. I mean, they've made those statements.
They say they want to push it to the states that are not capable alone of handling these things. And we've seen with over 900 tornadoes that have touched down this year so far and disastrous storms in areas like Kentucky and Illinois and Missouri and Arkansas and Mississippi and elsewhere, FEMA has been slow to react if it's reacted at all.
Also, you have FEMA rejecting supplemental assistance requests or just delaying it in states like Georgia, in North Carolina, across these areas that have been really, really harmed significantly. Now, let me just show you this longer clip that CBS put together of other people who have been impacted in very bad ways by the Trump regime. We're talking about red states, purple state, blue state.
It doesn't matter. We're Americans and FEMA should be working for us. Here, play this clip.
My. Double wide mobile home was located right here.
68 days ago, a deadly tornado in Tylertown, Mississippi leveled Dorothy Yarborough's home. Riding out a tornado in a double wide seems like a very scary experience.
It was. It was. It happened so fast.
But the response from the Federal Disaster Agency, FEMA, has been slow. Typically, when a tornado destroys a town, someone like Yarborough applies for federal assistance, the president signs the declaration, and FEMA spends money to recover and rebuild. Yarborough has applied, but after 10 weeks, she's got nothing but a huge pile of debris and this camper. So this was donated by a church.
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Chapter 2: How is FEMA responding to disasters in red states?
One of those reforms is that you gotta get FEMA out of Homeland Security. Homeland has bastardized FEMA. They have used FEMA in ways that FEMA was not built for. And they turned FEMA into the grant agency for every other department in Homeland, which got FEMA off its core mission of response and recovery. And that's been well known.
You talk to former administrators of FEMA, Democrat and Republican, and they've all said the same thing, which is why I have a bill with Byron Donalds, of all people, who's running for governor, endorsed by President Trump, to get FEMA out of Homeland. But that's not what they've done, what they've done and what the secretary has done.
And I don't know if the secretary has even done this with the White House, even knowing, OK, the secretary has taken something that needed help and she has completely broken it. I believe what you're going to see is this summer, the secretary has turned FEMA into the Newark airport. I think you're going to see it fail in ways we don't yet know.
And it's just amazing to watch Arkansas, who had met the thresholds that are mandated in the Stafford Act, not get their declaration. And let me explain. In emergency management, time, it's all about time. It's all about going quickly. In fact, that's what the president said. He wanted to speed up FEMA, yet the secretary has made everything slower. Nothing is more efficient.
Remember Doge, Department of Government Efficiency? They forgot the E piece. Efficiency. FEMA's not more efficient. NOAA's not more efficient. In fact, there's not a single thing that is working more efficiently. But FEMA has lost 30% of its workforce. A lot of these were senior people, knew what they were doing. You've got regional offices that are empty. And they're delaying declarations.
Delaying declarations means that states aren't going to spend money. Locals aren't going to spend money. These are fiscally constrained areas. They don't have it. I mean, I said to the speaker and to Steve Scalise and to others, like, you guys know this. Without FEMA, if Louisiana gets hit by, you know, a Category 4 storm, okay, from the Gulf, you know, your state goes bankrupt without FEMA.
Mississippi goes bankrupt. Alabama goes bankrupt. So when you're watching those people who are saying they're not getting any help, it's because the states don't have the money, the cities don't have the money, and they rely on FEMA. And they're supposed to be getting what's called individual assistance. which we wanna try to speed up the process. That's what they're waiting on.
And because there's no declaration, they can't get individual assistance. So there will be towns that will look like that, who won't get rebuilt without FEMA. And when we get into hurricane season, usually they get what's called a pre-landfall declaration.
As the storm's approaching, because we know how the track is going to be, we give them a pre-landfall deck, which allows you to move ice, water, power generation, life health, safety, swift water rescue, and lets the state and locals know that they're going to get reimbursed. These local governments won't spend any money in Florida.
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