Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said Sunday on ABC's “This Week” that the Biden-Harris administration had a “fundamentally incompetent and overly bureaucratic response” to recent hurricanes. he said.
A partial transcription follows:
Martha Raddatz: I want to start by talking about hurricanes. During Hurricane Helen, I heard former President Trump suggest that the federal government would not only send FEMA hurricane aid to immigrants, but would also go out of its way to not help people in Republican areas. Do you think it's true?
Vance: Well, Martha, what the president is saying is basically that FEMA aid is a distraction by going to illegal immigrants, by the way, good morning, thank you for having us. Republican congressmen representing the area are on the scene and say they need to call the White House to get FEMA to deliver food and water. Frankly, I don't think there's anything malicious going on here, Martha. But I think we've had an incompetent response to this particular crisis, especially in Western North Carolina. To be fair, it hit harder than many expected.
But basically, six days after the hurricane, the 82nd Airborne is still trickling in. I think our response to the hurricane was fundamentally incompetent and overly bureaucratic. So what we hear from people on the ground is that they feel left behind. And Martha, of course, you have to remember that I know this area very well. This is the Appalachian region of our country, where people have felt ignored by the government for years, and FEMA on top of the slow and slow hurricane response doesn't help. a lot –
RADDATZ: I want to go back to what former President Trump said. He said they are committed to not helping people in Republican areas. There is no truth to that, and Pentagon officials have said of the staging that active-duty troops were staged, ready, and immediately deployed before they were called up. So President Trump, former President Trump, is saying things that are not true about that money being withheld from Republican areas.
Vance: Well, Martha, I think you're actually disrupting the allocation of resources from the U.S. military's rapid response. So, in FEMA's defense, there are things they couldn't do after this hurricane. In practice, it requires military command and control and requires military resources to be deployed in the area. I think what the president said frankly is the same as what some of Kamala Harris' representatives have said. I mean, if those areas were a little more Democratic, maybe Kamala Harris would be, too, and we would have focused more on that. This recognition is not an outright attack on the good people at FEMA. It suggests that Americans feel left out by the government, Martha, and they are.
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