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(CN) — During a visit to Central Texas following devastating flooding on July 4, President Donald Trump on Friday lashed out at a reporter who questioned whether there were sufficient warnings before the floods.
“Several families we heard from are obviously upset because they say those warnings, those alerts didn’t go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved. What do you say to those families?” CBS News Texas reporter Marissa Armas asked Trump at a press conference in Kerrville, Texas.
“Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you,” Trump responded. “I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.”
“It’s easy to sit back and say, ‘Oh, what could have happened here or there?’” he added. “You know, maybe we could have done something differently. This was a thing that has never happened before, and nobody’s ever seen anything — I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve gone to some real bad ones. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Trump’s visit comes after catastrophic flooding swept through Central Texas over Independence Day weekend, leaving at least 128 people dead and around 160 still missing. Local officials have beencriticized over the emergency response to the flooding.
The Trump administration has also faced scrutiny over the impact of cost-cutting measures at agencies like the National Weather Service and FEMA on the flood response. Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Texas U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro have called for an investigation into whether staffing cuts at the National Weather Service, the federal agency responsible for providing weather forecasts and issuing warnings for dangerous weather events, contributed to the high loss of life.
In May, the National Weather Service was reportedly scrambling to reassign staffers to fill critical roles after nearly 600 employees were laid off or retired as part of the Trump administration’s effort to slim down the federal workforce.
Erica Cei, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service, told Courthouse News Service in an email that the federal agency’s Austin/San Antonio and San Angelo Weather Forecast Offices had extra staff members on duty during the flooding.
“All forecasts and warnings were issued in a timely manner,” Cei said. “Additionally, these offices were able to provide decision services to local partners, including those in the emergency management community.”
The general consensus among experts has been that the staffing cuts did not slow the weather service’s forecasting of the flooding. But some experts have said the cuts may have impacted the agency’s ability to coordinate with local officials. Austin-area news outlet KXAN reported that the warning coordination meteorologist for the agency’s Austin/San Antonio office, who served as the primary liaison between the weather service and local emergency managers and public safety officials, took early retirement in April as part of the federal government’s workforce cuts.
“I am convinced that the staff cuts that we saw were a contributing factor to the inability of the emergency managers to respond," former NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad said on CNN. “The staffing was just fine, and the White House has concurred with this, to get the forecast out and to get the watches and warnings issued, but when you send a message there’s no guarantee it’s being received. So someone needs to follow up, and that’s the warning coordination meteorologist — a position that was vacant.”
In response to an inquiry about this criticism, a White House spokesperson dismissed it as insignificant.
“While the Trump Administration is focused on helping Texas recover from this tragedy, Courthouse News is desperately grasping at straws to try and blame President Trump for a historic natural disaster. All of the experts have already debunked this ridiculous narrative — the National Weather Service was well staffed and did their job to provide warnings to those impacted,” spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in an email.
The Trump administration has also faced questions over the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to the disaster. FEMA was reportedly delayed in deploying urban search and rescue crews due to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s policy that she must personally sign off on any grants or contracts over $100,000 — which is a a relatively minor expenditure for the agency, according to officials who have spoken to reporters on the matter.
Noem has defended her response to the floods, saying that other DHS assets like Coast Guard and Border Patrol teams were deployed immediately.
Other aspects of FEMA’s response have also been criticized, including claims that many flood survivors’ calls to FEMA’s disaster assistance line for various types of financial assistance went unanswered due to staffing issues.
FEMA and DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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