Psaki 'Surprised' Trump Isn't Helping ‘Trump Supporters’ in Texas, Blames FEMA Cuts #Political
On Tuesday night, MSNBC’s The Briefing With Jen Psaki cited FEMA cuts as a main factor for the response to the Texas floods. Psaki still used this narrative despite multiple reports coming out that emergency management and response had been on par with or exceeded expectations.
Psaki let the irony flow with this statement:
Unlike California, Texas is of course a red state with a Republican governor and plenty of Trump supporters. So if Trump was going to help any state, you’d think it would be a state like Texas. And he did sign a major disaster declaration within days of the flood, but what’s unclear right now is how much help FEMA is capable of providing anymore. Even when Trump wants to provide it, because for months now we have seen report after report of people inside FEMA warning that the agency hasn’t been preparing for disasters the way it normally does.
Despite claiming that Trump had been “weaponizing FEMA” to “punish political enemies,” Trump had never withheld funding to disasters for political reasons. Ironically, under the Biden administration, a FEMA staffer was fired for telling workers to ignore homes of Trump supporters during Hurricane Helene relief efforts.
It was the blind leading the blind when Psaki decided to cite independent journalist Marisa Kabas of the far-left Handbasket on how FEMA cuts directly related to mismanagement of the Texas flooding:
In fact, the agency has reportedly been losing employees at such an alarming rate, rather than staffing up to prepare for disaster season, which is normally what they would be doing during this period of time. In Texas, where there are, again, at least 161 people unaccounted for, sources within FEMA told independent journalist Marisa Kabas that quote, “barely any staff members deployed.” As one FEMA staffer put it, quote, “We are doing a lot less than normal.” And the acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson, is, quote, “nowhere to be found.” Now, this is important because recovery in a place like Texas is not one day or four days, it’s weeks, it’s months, it could be years in some places.
The reason “barely any staff members deployed” was because the state of Texas had deployed 2,100 of their own personnel spanning across 20 different agencies to help with disaster relief. Everything Governor Abbott had asked for from the federal government had been approved, from a major disaster declaration to Black Hawk helicopters. In order to streamline federal relief, the Trump administration elected to have FEMA support resemble state block grants when it came to sending money for relief.
Later, Psaki had on former FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who oversaw the management of Hurricane Helene. According to an Elon University poll, only 37 percent of Carolina residents approved the government's handling of disaster management:
PSAKI: To go to just your last point you made, because this is sort of — there’s an impact of underfunding and cutting staff, and there’s been a range of reports, and we don’t have them confirmed, about how many staff are actually on the ground at this point in time. What do you make? And this is not blaming a particular person, but what do you make from what you can see of how understaffed they may be or what needs are not being met? And you’ve touched on some of them, I just wanted to dig into it more specifically.
DEANNE CRISWELL: Yeah, Jen, I think, you know, the first thing that they would send is an Incident Management Assistance Team that sits side by side with that state director, embeds in that state emergency management office so they can work together. And I do believe one of those teams has been deployed, but they also are going to be talking, that team is going to be talking to them about other resources. We would typically send out what we call Disaster Survivor Assistance Teams. These individuals that can go out, walk the community door to door, go into places where people are; shelters, churches, community centers and help people get registered for assistance or understand what their needs are, and actually even help match them up with other nonprofits and other non-governmental agencies. But that program has been stopped as far as I know. I haven't heard anything differently, and that's such a critical resource to bring government to the people instead of making people come find the government.
The reason they haven’t been deployed was because the Texas Division of Emergency Management deploys their own team called the Incident Support Task Force, who can also conduct this role.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s The Briefing With Jen Psaki
9:05:31 PM ET
July 8, 2025JEN PSAKI: The idea of a president, any president weaponizing FEMA like that, which is essentially weaponizing disaster relief that people in red states and blue states and purple states and people who aren’t political at all depend on. All to punish political enemies is obviously unbelievably alarming, it should alarm everybody, even people who voted for him.
Unlike California, Texas is of course a red state with a Republican governor and plenty of Trump supporters. So if Trump was going to help any state, you’d think it would be a state like Texas. And he did sign a major disaster declaration within days of the flood, but what’s unclear right now is how much help FEMA is capable of providing anymore. Even when Trump wants to provide it, because for months now we have seen report after report of people inside FEMA warning that the agency hasn’t been preparing for disasters the way it normally does.
In fact, the agency has reportedly been losing employees at such an alarming rate, rather than staffing up to prepare for disaster season, which is normally what they would be doing during this period of time. In Texas, where there are, again, at least 161 people unaccounted for, sources within FEMA told independent journalist Marisa Kabas that quote, “barely any staff members deployed.” As one FEMA staffer put it, quote, “We are doing a lot less than normal.” And the acting FEMA administrator David Richardson, is, quote, “nowhere to be found.” Now, this is important because recovery in a place like Texas is not one day or four days, it’s weeks, it’s months, it could be years in some places.
(...)
9:51:06 PM
[INTERVIEW WITH FORMER FEMA ADMINISTRATOR DEANNE CRISWELL]
PSAKI: To go to just your last point you made, because this is sort of — there’s an impact of underfunding and cutting staff, and there’s been a range of reports, and we don’t have them confirmed, about how many staff are actually on the ground at this point in time. What do you make? And this is not blaming a particular person, but what do you make from what you can see of how understaffed they may be or what needs are not being met? And you’ve touched on some of them, I just wanted to dig into it more specifically.
DEANNE CRISWELL: Yeah, Jen, I think, you know, the first thing that they would send is an Incident Management Assistance Team that sits side by side with that state director, embeds in that state emergency management office so they can work together. And I do believe one of those teams has been deployed, but they also are going to be talking, that team is going to be talking to them about other resources. We would typically send out what we call Disaster Survivor Assistance Teams. These individuals that can go out, walk the community door to door, go into places where people are; shelters, churches, community centers and help people get registered for assistance or understand what their needs are, and actually even help match them up with other nonprofits and other non-governmental agencies. But that program has been stopped as far as I know. I haven't heard anything differently, and that's such a critical resource to bring government to the people instead of making people come find the government.
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