Senator JD Vance (R-OH) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the Biden-Harris administration had a “fundamentally incompetent, overly bureaucratic response” to the recent hurricanes.
Partial transcript as follows:
MARTHA RADDATZ: I want to start with the hurricane. During Hurricane Helene as we heard former President Trump suggested the federal government was not only sending FEMA aid meant for the hurricane to migrants but going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas. Do you think that is true?
VANCE: Well, Martha, what the president says is that fundamentally, FEMA aid is distracted by going to illegal migrants, and, by the way, good morning and thanks for having me. We’ve got Republican congressman here on the ground who represents that area saying that they have to call the White House to get the food and water to FEMA. I don’t frankly think there’s anything malicious going on here, Martha. But I do think we’ve had an incompetent response to this particular crisis particularly in western North Carolina, which to be fair was hit harder than a lot of us expected it.
But fundamentally, if you’ve got six days after the hurricane, the 82nd Airborne is still trickling in, I do think that we had a fundamentally incompetent, overly bureaucratic response to the hurricane so what you hear from folks on the ground is they feel left behind. And, Martha, we have to remember, of course, I — I know this area well. This is the Appalachian region of our country where people have felt ignored by their government for years, and it doesn’t help when you have a response to the hurricane that’s slow, that’s halting, and then you layer on top of it FEMA has done a lot —
RADDATZ: I want to go back to what former President Trump said. He said they’re going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas. There is no truth to that and on staging, Pentagon officials say that active duty troops were staged and ready to go before being called upon and were instantly out the door. So, President Trump — former President Trump is saying things that aren’t true about that money being withheld from Republican areas.
VANCE: Well, Martha, I think you’re actually confusing staging of resources from the rapid response of the U.S. military. I mean, look, in FEMA’s defense, there are things after this hurricane that FEMA simply could not do. You actually need military command and control you need military resources deployed to the area, and I think all the president has said is frankly what some of Kamala Harris’s surrogates have said which is that if these areas were a little bit more Democratic, maybe Kamala Harris would have focused on them more. That acknowledgement is not to attack frankly the good folks of FEMA. It’s to suggest that Americans are feeling left behind by their government, which they are, Martha.
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