In a fiery op-ed published by the Miami Herald, former President Donald Trump‘s recent claims about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its role in disaster relief were sharply criticized, with the article labeling them as “garbage.”
The opinion piece, penned by David Mastio, tore into the former president’s assertions about federal emergency management, namely “Trump’s allegation that the Biden-Harris administration has ‘stolen’ funds meant for natural disaster relief to deal with the man-made crisis at the border in which millions of immigrants flooded our country in large part because the Biden-Harris administration loosened Trump-era asylum restrictions.”
Trump has inferred that under his leadership, FEMA had operated more efficiently than under President Joe Biden, particularly in handling natural disasters such as hurricanes.
The former president has repeatedly accused the Biden administration of misappropriating FEMA funds for purposes unrelated to disaster relief.
Trump has also suggested that agency resources, which are meant to aid communities in the wake of natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires, and floods, are being diverted to other areas, including immigration management at the southern border.
These allegations were labeled as “garbage” by the Florida publication, with the writer attributing Trump’s assertions to “a combination of age, incompetence and malice.”
Donald Trump participates in a town hall on October 4, 2024, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. A writer for the Miami Herald has criticized Trump’s recent comments regarding FEMA.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
However, the article asserts that FEMA did spend “hundreds of millions of dollars on housing, feeding and otherwise caring for migrants mostly here on flimsy pleas for asylum. If that money was not spent on immigrants, it would be there to help care for those in need as [Hurricane] Milton crushes Florida.”
While the op-ed claimed that Congress gave FEMA $650 million, “if that money had not been spent on immigrants, in a gray area of the law, the Biden-Harris administration would have been able to ‘reprogram’ it to use on urgent hurricane relief which threatens to deplete FEMA’s appropriation for that purpose.”
According to the Miami Herald piece, when Trump was in charge, his administration “did something worse than the accusations he’s made against Democrats: His administration drained money out of FEMA’s disaster relief accounts so that it could spend it on caring for immigrants of dubious legality.”
The op-ed also addressed Trump’s proposals regarding national debt, comparing them to Vice President Kamala Harris‘ plans, calling them “twice as bad as Harris, despite Harris’ being the most fiscally reckless plan a Democratic presidential candidate has ever proposed in a general election.”
Newsweek contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns, and FEMA via email on Thursday for comment.
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