Rachel Maddow slams Trump’s Texas flood response, compares it to George Bush’s Hurricane Katrina missteps
KERR COUNTY, TEXAS: Rachel Maddow on Monday night, July 14, compared President Donald Trump’s response to the July 4 floods in Texas to former President George W Bush’s notorious mishandling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“Do you know who this person is? It’s okay if you don’t,” Maddow opened on 'The Rachel Maddow Show', flashing a picture of FEMA Director David Richardson who finally popped up in Texas over the weekend.
George W Bush’s infamous flyover after Hurricane Katrina resurfaces
The MSNBC anchor took a detour down memory lane to revisit Bush’s FEMA chief, Michael D Brown, affectionately known as “Brownie.”
Appointed in 2003, Brown’s biggest claim to fame wasn’t disaster relief but running an Arabian horse association.
“This is a man whose main experience in disasters was that he had caused some minor organizational disasters in his tenure as head of an Arabian horse association,” Maddow said.
“How did he end up at FEMA?” she asked. “I don’t know. He was a friend of George W Bush’s campaign manager, and he was a Republican.”
Maddow subsequently pulled up an image of Bush gazing down at the devastation in New Orleans from Air Force One. “Like he was enjoying his trip to the aquarium,” Maddow remarked.
She continued, “Bush never could quite answer why he praised Brownie, why he praised his FEMA director, Michael Brown, for doing a ‘heck of a job,’ or more importantly, why he put this guy — why he’d put the Arabian horse association guy with zero disaster experience — in that job in the first place.”
Maddow goes after Trump’s FEMA chief
After one of the most devastating floods in recent memory, Maddow questioned the whereabouts of Trump’s FEMA point man.
“The first time anybody had seen hide nor hair of President Donald Trump’s man running FEMA after one of the biggest floods in this country in decades was this weekend when he finally showed up," she said.
But showing up was just the beginning of the mess. According to Maddow, the Trump administration forgot to renew the contract for the folks who answer FEMA calls — the ones who physically help flood victims.
“In the immediate aftermath of the flood, Trump’s Homeland Security department, of which FEMA is a part, they apparently forgot or at least neglected to extend the contract to pay the people who answer the phones when you call FEMA for help,” she said.
“So all the people at the FEMA call center got fired on July 5, and more than 80% of calls for help after the flood did not get answered.”
A picture-perfect blunder
Richardson finally showed his face in Texas, where he was photographed chatting with a younger man.
“Image is everything, young man,” Maddow said. “You definitely don’t want to make the kinds of insensitive mistakes that other people have very famously made after disasters like this in our country.”
She then put Richardson surveying Texas flood damage from a helicopter in a split screen beside that legendary Bush-on-the-plane Katrina shot. “Make sure you don’t make any of these exact same mistakes,” Maddow said.
“Have I mentioned that Trump’s FEMA pick is the first person to run FEMA since Brownie, who has no disaster response or emergency management experience at all?” she added.
“He did remember that great photo of George W Bush, though, and made sure to take pains to replicate it exactly this weekend.”
