Trump visits North Carolina, California, disaster-hit states he tried to politicize

President Donald Trump traveled to North Carolina on Friday and is on his way to California to make his first presidential visits to disaster-ravaged states that he has tried to politicize.

On the first leg of his trip, Trump flew to Asheville, North Carolina, to visit sites affected by Hurricane Helene in September. At the time, Trump spread baseless conspiracy theories about the relief effort, claiming (among other things) that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was diverting aid meant for hurricane victims to undocumented immigrants.

On Friday, he again criticized FEMA and said he plans to sign one executive order on reform of the board but also to increase the possibility of “getting rid of FEMA completely”. Trump suggested states should handle recovery efforts from such disasters on their own rather than relying on the federal agency, which he said “just hasn’t done the job.”

Trump is scheduled to arrive later on Friday in California where massive wildfires have spread across the Los Angeles area. It is unclear whether he will visit the neighborhoods devastated by the flames with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, with whom he has publicly sparred over the fires.

Trump has falsely claimed that the state’s efforts to protect wildlife have hindered access to water in Southern California, and he has blamed the fires on the incompetence of Democratic lawmakers. In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Trump suggested withholding federal aid to California.

“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water down,” he said.

Speaking to reporters in North Carolina on Friday, Trump again proposed to set conditions on aid to California, a state with a Democratic majority.

“I have a condition. In California we want them to have voter ID so the people have a vote because right now the people don’t have a vote because you don’t know who’s voting and it’s very corrupt,” he said. “If they released the water when I asked them to – because I told them to do it seven years ago – if they would have, you wouldn’t have had the problem.”