This weekend, all eyes turned towards the southeastern United States as the massive Hurricane Dorian approached. Although they’ve only been in place for about two and a half years at this point, the Trump administration has already fumbled major disaster responses — this weekend, acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan went on Sunday morning cable news shows including ABC’s This Week to try and defend the administration’s position. In the process, he ended up fumbling that effort too — when confronted by host Martha Raddatz about a planned transfer of large amounts of money from FEMA to ICE, he grinned while insisting no plans would affect disaster response capabilities.
The Trump administration has already faced steep criticism for the plans. Recently, House Ways and Means Committee Democrat Don Beyer of Virginia even insisted he didn’t think the transfer would be legal considering the lack of verifiable conditions necessitating it at the southern border. Still, McAleenan told Raddatz, apparently attempting to completely gloss over concern about the situation:
‘No money has been moved yet. We have to do a notification to Congress in advance; any potential transfers will not impact our ability to respond to this storm or any other storms in the rest of the hurricane season. There are two different elements of the disaster recovery fund — the major disaster fund has $25 billion in it, so $155 million transfer from the base fund is not going to affect our ability to respond and recover from a major disaster.’
“No money has been moved yet. We have to do a notification to Congress in advance,” acting DHS Sec. McAleenan says about transferring some FEMA funds to ICE. “Any potential transfers will not impact our ability to respond to this storm or any other storms” https://t.co/Odl0AJxnzP pic.twitter.com/drPDNvcb7O
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) September 1, 2019
Yet, concern continues. When Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico in 2017, FEMA was ill-prepared to the point of high-profile mishaps like millions of water bottles getting left on a random runway to rot. This weekend, McAleenan insisted that FEMA had time to learn from their mistakes and get resources in place to respond more appropriately to Dorian, as needed.
One of those new steps is a meeting set for this Sunday at FEMA headquarters between President Donald Trump himself and members of leadership. Considering the fact that just recently a headline emerged asserting that Trump had suggested nuking hurricanes in meetings with top officials in past seasons — this meeting isn’t exactly poised to be reassuring.
Still, McAleenan insisted to Raddatz:
‘We’ve had lots of time to prepare for the length of this storm as it’s approaching the American coastline. So we’re going to have all of the elements of the U.S. government — the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Transportation, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Health and Human Services — it’s really a whole of government effort, and the president’s going to make sure that we’re on the same page, that we’re tracking this, and that we’re going to be ready.’
Pres. Trump is set to visit the FEMA headquarters today in the wake of Hurricane Dorian.
“It’s really a whole of government effort and the president’s going to make sure that we are on the same page,” acting Homeland Security Sec. Kevin McAleenan says https://t.co/Odl0AJxnzP pic.twitter.com/KoMDxpptfb
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) September 1, 2019
The storm reached Category 5 status over the weekend, continuing to beat expectations for what it was actually going to do. As Sunday got underway, sustained winds were clocked at the level of a whopping 175 mph, and 200 mph wind gusts were reported as possible in the Bahamas, where the storm would arrive before whatever effects it would inflict on the United States.
Featured Image via screenshot
