Trump Made a FEMA Hurricane Meeting About Him
By all outward signs, the president's brain is an addled melting pot of schoolyard insults, Electoral College maps, racial stereotypes, crippling insecurity, and TV ratings figures. This is not always conducive to staying on-topic, as we have frequently seen in his public appearances since taking the helm of the World's Greatest Democracy. So it was once again Wednesday, when Trump and his wife, Melania-making her first appearance in a month following rampant speculation about her well-being-visited FEMA to talk hurricane preparedness as this year's storm season begins.
A report last week from Harvard's School of Public Health estimated that nearly 5,000 people died in Puerto Rico last year as a result of Hurricane Maria-far above the official government death toll of 64. That would make it the worst natural disaster in modern American history, and a slow response from U.S. authorities, including FEMA, almost certainly contributed to it. Yet, according to The Washington Post, Trump barely mentioned Puerto Rico at the FEMA meeting yesterday:
He briefly referred to Puerto Rico-where authorities now say thousands died as a result of last year’s hurricane. The Trump administration was roundly criticized for its performance, and hundreds of thousands in the U.S. territory remain without electricity.
Trump did not mention Puerto Rico’s victims but thanked Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) for helping and noted that the power company was “in bankruptcy prior to the hurricane.” He said the recovery was a “tough job.” He also mentioned Puerto Rico in passing once with the cameras rolling.
Instead, the president devoted his time to stuff like this:
“Part of it is, they want to have all new. Instead of having the system that throws the aircraft off the [ship], which was always steam,” he said. “They now have magnets. They’re using magnets instead of steam. . . . They spent hundreds of millions of dollars, I’m hearing not great things about it. It’s frankly ridiculous.”
The room did not respond to his assessment.
Imagine you come to a meeting on hurricane response, in anticipation of the new season and following the worst in recent memory, and the Leader of the Free World soaks up the allotted time rambling about steam and magnets. This discussion cropped up because someone from the Department of Defense was...there:
When Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan began speaking, Trump within 10 seconds moved the conversation to negotiating airplane prices ... “We saved $1.6 billion on Air Force One,” he said. “Can you believe it? I got involved in the negotiations. The press refuses to report that, but that’s okay. . . . People were really surprised.”
Military officials have not been able to explain where Trump got such a figure.
Surely that's not the only thing they can't explain.
Trump analyzed Tuesday's election results in California, attacking the Democratic nominee for governor. He bragged that: "We won every seat that I endorsed. The ones we didn’t give, they didn’t do too well, as you probably know.”
He boasted that Republicans were improving in generic midterm polls, then said: “I don’t know if that means anything. I’ve never heard of a generic poll."
He talked up the administration's plan to subsidize coal-in 2018-and encouraged Energy Secretary Rick Perry to announce it soon: “I’d love to put it out-‘clean coal, nuclear,’ it’s a very important message,” the president said.
Trump spent "several minutes" crowing about the economy and specific companies that were doing well, taking credit for their success.
“We’re setting records like we’ve never seen before. Whether it’s the employment records I went over, whether it’s the number of companies pouring into the country. We have tremendous number of companies coming back. Nobody had any idea this was going to happen. I did. . . . Things are happening that they’ve never seen before.”
Again, this was a meeting intended to up the administration's preparedness for hurricane season. It's not surprising that the guy who substituted a freak show of jingoistic buffoonery on the White House lawn for a Super Bowl celebration would get off-topic. And it's not a shocker that Trump made a hurricane response meeting about his personal success endorsing candidates for California House races. But it damn sure isn't encouraging.
Naturally, there was a totally bizarre moment to go along with all the malignant narcissism:
I am laughing so goddamn hard at this video of Trump inexplicably putting his water bottle on the floor, and Pence immediately doing the same for no reason whatsoever. pic.twitter.com/qEFPzKClYj
- Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) June 6, 2018
One thing that's lost in all the ugliness is that the president is a seriously weird guy. So, of course, is the vice president.
The next meeting that Trump-and the rest of us-can look forward to is the G7, a two-day meeting of the world's great economic and political powers, many of whom are, at least for now, allies. Trump is already complaining about having to go-also known as having to do his job-probably because he fears no one will want to sit next to him at lunch. That was at least the case at the G20, when no one would talk to him and he was ridiculed by the foreign press. But "we are respected again," you see.
The conference will be held in Montreal and hosted by Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, one of our closest allies that Trump just imposed tariffs on for "national security" reasons. When Trudeau questioned Trump on this, Trump suggested the label was justified because Canada burned down the White House during the War of 1812. If this was a joke, perhaps the industries and workers affected by this major geopolitical initiative will get a hearty chuckle. They'll certainly laugh knowing it was the British who burned the White House.
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