With Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton wreaking havoc in the south-eastern United States, Republican presidential candidate and former US president Donald Trump has been targeting the Joe Biden administration over delayed response to the disasters.
Trump has accused the Biden administration of “deliberately” delaying the response as many in the storm-affected areas were Republican voters.
ALSO READ | US presidential election 2024: All about the 7 swing states that could sway results
However, several ex-officials in the previous Trump administration claimed that he himself had withheld disaster aid when he was in office. They also warned that he would do it again.
The ex-officials claimed that initially Trump refused to release federal disaster aid for wildfires in California in 2018, withheld wildlife assistance for Washington state in 2020, and severely restricted emergency relief to Puerto Rico in the wake of the devastating Hurricane Maria in 2017 because he felt "these places were not sufficiently supportive of him".
With the US elections nearing, the new revelations havgiven a shot in the arm for the Democrat's campaigns.
“Trump absolutely didn’t want to give aid to California or Puerto Rico purely for partisan politics – because they didn’t vote for him,” Kevin Carroll, former senior counsellor to the Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly during Trump’s term, told the Guardian.
aLSO READ
- Kamala Harris's decision to make her health report public puts the spotlight on Trump’s physical, mental fitness
- A.R. Rahman throws his weight behind Kamala Harris
- US: Donald Trump says India ‘biggest’ import tariff charger, vows to reciprocate if elected
- Hurricane devastation adds new twist to US presidential poll season
He added it was clear that Trump was vengeful towards those he perceived as not voting for him.
“He even wanted to pull the navy out of Hawaii because they didn’t vote for him," said Carroll.
Reportedly, Trump agreed to provide aid for California only after he was provided voting data revealing that Orange County, damaged by the wildfires, has a large number of Republican voters.
"It was shocking and appalling to us to see a president of the United States behaving in this way," said Olivia Troye, who was a homeland security adviser to the Trump White House.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican congresswoman whose district was damaged by wildfires, had written to Trump pleading to release funding to help them rebuild the affected areas. However, Trump's dislike of Jay Inslee, the state’s Democratic governor, allegedly made him withhold the funding.
As campaigns for the November 5 elections gather steam, several Republicans have announced their support for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
“Next time you won’t have the integrity of Mike Pence: you’ll have J.D. Vance who will do whatever Trump wants,” said Troye, who is a Republican but has endorsed Kamala Harris for president. “It’s concerning to think about a future Trump administration with just loyalists in these positions around him in these sort of moments that should be non-partisan,” he added.