Don't Make Fun Of Trump Acting FEMA Chief's Hurricane Season 'Joke' Or He'll Run Right Over You!
Do FEMA directors need to know hurricanes have seasons?
Acting Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director David Richardson, who has no experience whatsoever in emergency management, disaster relief, or even in horse breeding like that Bush guy Brownie did — and started off his time at FEMA by yelling at staff, “Don’t get in my way, [...] or I will run right over you” — surprised staff at the agency he runs when he said in a meeting Monday that he hadn’t known the USA has a hurricane season, Reuters reports. The staffers couldn’t tell whether Richardson was joking, according to the “four sources familiar with the situation” who were the basis for the report. Richardson’s comments left longtime FEMA staffers dismayed and baffled, the sources said. What, complete incompetence and indifference from Trump acting agency heads still comes as a surprise?
Monday was in fact the second day of hurricane season, which starts June 1 and ends November 30 every year. Maybe not everyone knew that, but the very existence of a “hurricane season” as a thing the government needs to be ready for is not exactly a Trivial Pursuit question. No license is needed to shoot a hurricane, but if you bag one, you do have to clean and gut it and remove the carcass.
But don’t you worry! The Department of Homeland Security later issued a very stern statement explaining that Richardson had been joking, gosh u guys, wy u so srs?
This assertion was met with skepticism in many quarters, since it is well known that the only joke Republicans know is “I identify as an attack helicopter” or its variant, “My pronouns are ‘fuck’ and ‘you.’”
Reuters notes that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “forecast last week that this year's season is expected to bring as many as 10 hurricanes.” Both NOAA and FEMA have lost tons of staff in the Mad Clown’s mass firings and in response to pressure to resign, leading to worries that the federal government cannot adequately prepare for, warn citizens about, or respond to deadly severe storms.
Trumpers generally justify the massive cuts by insisting that there’s too much deadwood in government, that states should handle it, and that Democrats can only blame themselves after forcing DEI, vaccine mandates, and “the climate hoax” on America for decades. Also illegal immigration.
The sources said that in addition to saying he hadn’t heard about this hurricane season thing, Richardson also said in the briefing that the agency’s disaster response plans for this year wouldn’t be changed after all, “despite having told staff to expect a new plan in May.” Apparently finding out what “hurricane season” is wasn’t the only homework he skipped in his “So! You’re the New Acting Director of a Federal Agency!” packet.
Richardson, who has no disaster response experience, said during Monday's briefing, a daily all-hands meeting held by phone and videoconference, that he will not be issuing a new disaster plan because he does not want to make changes that might counter the FEMA Review Council, the sources said.
President Donald Trump created the council to evaluate FEMA. Its members include DHS head Noem, governors and other officials.
In a May 15 staff town hall, Richardson said a disaster plan, including tabletop exercises, would be ready for review by May 23.
You can see why he wouldn’t worry too much about having a definite plan in place before hurricane season, since he didn’t know we had one.
Reuters didn’t go into any detail on how FEMA is expected to carry out the existing disaster ops plan after losing nearly 2,000 staffers, roughly a third of the people working there, but did note that it could have been even worse, since in May Noem “approved Richardson's request to retain more than 2,600 short-term disaster response and recovery employees whose terms were set to expire this year, one of the sources said,” so hooray for that. Reuters adds that those short-term staffers “make up the highest proportion of FEMA employees, about 40%, and are a pillar of the agency's on-the-ground response efforts.”
Still, it’s a bit unsettling to learn the timing of Richardson’s request may have been more of a pleasant coincidence than a deliberate plan, because what even is hurricane season again?
Richardson is a bit of a last-minute hire, since he’s replacing the previous acting FEMA director, Cameron Hamilton, who said during a congressional hearing last month that he didn’t think that it was “in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” and was promptly shitcanned by DHS Secretary Kristy Puppykiller Noem for his shocking disloyalty. Despite being a MAGA Chud in most respects, Hamilton at least had some minimal qualifications for the job, which may have been another reason to fire him.
Richardson, on the other hand, is a former Marine officer who was brought in to replace Hamilton from DHS’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, presumably because that was sufficiently unrelated to disaster response.
The very convincing DHS statement explaining that of course Richardson was simply joking also made sure to add the boilerplate political invective that’s now mandatory for routine press statements under Trump. The email doesn’t appear to have named the spokesperson, but it has the characteristic tone of top DHS comms person Tricia McLaughlin, who may be demanding her underlings mimic her style. Per the Washington Post, the statement insisted
“Despite meanspirited attempts to falsely frame a joke as policy, there is no uncertainty about what FEMA will be doing this Hurricane Season. […] FEMA is laser focused on disaster response, and protecting the American people.”
The spokesperson said that under Richardson and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, “FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors.”
So don’t worry, FEMA will be lean and mean and the states will pick up the slack, because they’ll be “empowered,” which is Trumpster-speak for “You’re on your own, good luck.”
Those local folks will be further empowered to make it up as they go along, unburdened by the heavy hand of bloated DC-thinking about how to do disaster response, because, as Reuters adds, linking to a previous Reuters story, “FEMA recently sharply reduced hurricane training and workshops for state and local emergency managers due to travel and speaking restrictions imposed on staff.”
Lean, mean, and untrained! Isn’t life in Trump’s America wonderful? No more of those nasty rumor campaigns about FEMA withholding disaster assistance from Trump voters out of spite, nosiree! Now it’s a new day, when instead of blaming Joe Biden, it’ll all be up to the states, and if they can’t rescue people and rebuild after a major storm, their governors should have prepared better. (Unless it’s a Republican governor in a tight election against a Democratic challenger, in which case it will be the fault of both the Democratic nominee and Joe Biden again.)
Also, speaking of hurricane season, here’s Miami TV meteorologist John Morales offering his own start-of-the-season warning about why massive budget and staffing cuts make America more dangerous. While he’s specifically addressing the Trump admininstration’s hollowing-out of NOAA and the National Weather Service, not its parallel hollowing-out of FEMA, the gist is the same: We used to have some confidence about what will happen in a hurricane, or after it, because there were lots of smart people dedicated to doing their jobs. We can’t make that guarantee now, and that’s not a very funny joke. Morales starts out his TV editorial with a clip of him saying 2019 that Hurricane Dorian, headed straight for Miami, would definitely turn north, which it did.
“Confidently, I went on TV and told you ‘It’s going to turn. You don’t need to worry. It is going to turn.’
And I am here to tell you that I’m not sure I can do that this year.”
Dorian, of course, was the hurricane that Trump said might hit Alabama, although nobody at the Weather Service had predicted that. After Trump sharpied a copy of the forecast, then-Acting NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs postdicted that yes indeed, Alabama had been in the storm track, and President Trump was actually right, he sure was, and wasn’t that a good three-headed gopher he made, too?
Trump picked Jacobs to (actingly) lead NOAA again, although he hasn’t had a confirmation hearing yet. No hurry, it’s not like there’s anything coming up on the weather calendar anyway.
We suppose we could also mention here that the cuts to FEMA, NOAA, and the NWS were all called for in Project 2025, but that feels like piling on. Besides, as we can all rest assured, it's good that the president is cutting these once-vital government agencies, it's real good. And tomorrow ... well, tomorrow's gonna be a real good day.
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It is likely to be a summer of historic suffering in the US. I wish all of us (who aren’t MAGA) the best of luck.
‘Roadkill has its seasons just like anything’
—Tom Waits