The Flood In Texas

The flood that hit Texas over the July 4th weekend still dominates the news.

A massive deluge of rain caused the Guadalupe River to rise more than 26 feet in 45 minutes. 

Floodwaters swept away people from homes and businesses including children at Camp Mystic, a summer camp. 

The death toll as I write this is over 120 people with another 200 still unaccounted for.  

The sheer scale of this tragedy is mind numbing and heart wrenching.

What's going on beyond the loss of life and property is problematic to say the least. 

Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem, who  oversees FEMA, did not deploy FEMA's search and rescue teams to Texas until Monday, 3 days after the flooding started.  It seems Noem requires her authorization for any expenditure over $100,000 which bogged FEMA down in paperwork when they should've have been scrambling people and resources to Texas.  

If Noem's actions made FEMA seem less responsive and ineffective, well in Trump's world, that's not a bug but the very idea. 

Since January, this is what Donald Trump has been aiming for: decimating and undermining the programs that warn of impending disaster, coordinate the response, and work to minimize harm.

In the 2024 campaign, Trump pledged to bring disaster relief “back to the states".  

Just last month, Trump said "We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level. A governor should be able to handle it, and frankly, if they can’t handle it, the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn’t be governor."  

Which just shows how insanely STUPID Li'l Donnie is about the government he allegedly leads.

Disaster relief is already the perview of the states. FEMA functions not to sublimate the states but to supplement them.

Of course, now that a major disaster has struck a red state that voted for Trump three times and has a Republican governor and a Republican led legislature, maybe Li'l Donnie is less in a hurry to roll back FEMA.  

And sure enough when inevitably the next hurricane strikes Florida which also voted for Trump three times, has a Republican governor and a Republican led legislature and also where Trump keeps most of his stuff. 

Trump showed up in Texas to survey the damage from the flood where he spoke at length about his success in passing his "One Big Beautiful Bill", bitched about the border and Biden and some other third thing. 

He also wanted to be sure we all understood this flood wasn't his fault, saying this sort of thing only happens...

1) once every 100 years.

2) once every 500 years

3) once every 1,000 years.  

Then a reporter from a CBS affiliate in Texas had to temerity to ask this question:  “Several families we heard from are obviously upset because they say those warnings, those alerts didn’t go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved.  What do you say to those families?”

Trump offered a response. Guess which one is true.

1) "I understand that people are worried and upset by what happened."

2) "We will look into what happened and see what we can improve to do better in the future!"

3) "You are an evil person!"

I'll give you a moment to contemplate this query and think about wha-

It's 3! 

Oh, that was fast.

And also correct. 

Trump replied,  “Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you. I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that."

Subsquently a reporter from the conservative outlet Real America’s Voice thanked the president and other representatives at the event for their response to the disaster.

This made Li'l Donnie feel better. "Well, that’s a nice reporter. That’s a nice question.”

As for how the families of the missing and the dead feel, well, in the world of Trump, who gives a fuck?

As long as Li'l Donnie feels good about it. 

Family and a state trooper praying at Camp Mystic