Key Point: “[A] review of Trump’s record by POLITICO’s E&E News and interviews with two former Trump White House officials show that the former president was flagrantly partisan at times in response to disasters and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.”

E&E News: Helene isn’t the first time Trump inserted politics into a natural disaster

By: Scott Waldman and Thomas Frank

• [A] review of Trump’s record by POLITICO’s E&E News and interviews with two former Trump White House officials show that the former president was flagrantly partisan at times in response to disasters and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.

• Mark Harvey, who was Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, told E&E News on Wednesday that Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after deadly wildfires in 2018 because of the state’s Democratic leanings.

• Trump changed his mind after Harvey pulled voting results to show him that heavily damaged Orange County, California, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa, Harvey said.

• “We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” said Harvey, who recently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris alongside more than 100 other Republican former national security officials.

• Both Harvey and Olivia Troye, a former Trump White House homeland security adviser who backed up Harvey’s claim, say Trump is approaching Hurricane Helene with a similar mindset. They say he is politicizing a disaster that has killed more than 170 people in six states. And Troye, who has endorsed Harris for president, accused Trump of trying to divert attention from his own political liabilities on disaster responses.

• She said if Trump wins the White House again, he will view disasters through a political lens that values personal loyalty over damage considerations.

• “It’s not going to be about that American voter out there who isn’t even really paying attention to politics, and their house is gone, and the president of the United States is judging them for how they voted, and they didn’t even vote,” Troye said in an interview Wednesday.

• Troye, who played a lead role in federal disaster response, said local political leaders regularly called her office begging for help because Trump refused to sign documents approving aid. Troye said she had to repeatedly enlist former Vice President Mike Pence to apply pressure.

• Added Harvey: “There’s no empathy for the survivors. It is all about getting your photo-op, right? Disaster theater to make him look good.”
  
• In early 2019, shortly after taking office, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida met with Trump at the White House to ask a favor.

• Months earlier, while DeSantis was running for governor, Hurricane Michael had caused massive damage in the Florida Panhandle.

• DeSantis asked: Would the president order the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay 100 percent of recovery costs instead of its customary 75 percent?

• “This is Trump country — and they need your help,” DeSantis told the president, according to the Republican governor’s autobiography, “The Courage to Be Free.”

• “They love me in the Panhandle,” Trump replied, according to DeSantis’ book, published in 2023 as he was preparing to run for president. “I must have won 90 percent of the vote out there. Huge crowds. What do they need?”