Exaide: Trump targeted state for cuts
WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered a federal agency to cut off support for California wildfire victims because the state was “not part of his political base,” according to a former highranking government staffer.
Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, made the allegation in an online ad posted Monday in which he endorsed Democratic nomineetobe Joe Biden for president.
In the ad, produced by Republican Voters Against Trump, Taylor says Trump sought to “exploit the Department of Homeland Security for his own political purposes and to fuel his own agenda.” He cites a phone call he says Trump made to the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an example.
“He told FEMA to cut off the money and to no longer give individual assistance to California,” Taylor said. “He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down from a wildfire because he was so rageful that people in the state of California didn’t support him and that politically it wasn’t a base for him.”
Trump did publicly threaten to cut off disaster assistance to California in 2019, but cited allegedly poor forest management as the reason. FEMA never actually cut off its aid to California, which supports rebuilding streets and infrastructure, as well as individual home repairs, rental housing and other personal expenses.
In a statement, White House spokesman Judd Deere called Taylor “another creature of the D.C. swamp who never understood the importance of the president’s agenda or why the American people elected him and clearly just wants to cash in.”
Taylor joined Google as head of national security relations in October 2019, but is on leave from the position. Neither he nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to requests for comment.
Taylor does not say in the ad when Trump made the alleged call. In January 2019, two months after the Camp Fire killed 84 people and destroyed most of the town of Paradise, Trump tweeted that he had ordered FEMA not to give any more money to California to support fire disaster relief, but he said forest management practices were the reason.
“Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen. Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!” Trump said.
The president had already suggested such steps as allowing more logging and clearing of forest debris, saying Finland rarely had forest fires because Finns “spend a lot of time raking.” Critics noted that more than half of forestland in California is owned by the federal government, and that state and local agencies controlled just 3%.