MAGA: 'If something is wrong it's Joe Biden's fault, if something is great it's a victory for Trump'

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00:00Let's move from Berlin. Let's go to Texas, where the President, President Trump, is arriving in the next half hour

00:05to assess the damage of the worst flash floods in the state in 40 years.

00:10This time last Friday, we were reporting on the desperate efforts by rescue teams

00:13to get to hundreds of people trapped on the roofs, missing after the campsites around the Guadalupe River

00:19around the town of Coeville became inundated.

00:22At least 120 people have died. Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp for girls, was worst hit.

00:28There are still more than 100 people registered as missing, but the rescue attempt is now a recovery operation.

00:34And Regan Rabka is the Fire Marshal for the city of Fredericksburg.

00:40They are going methodically from pile to pile and going through it to try to find everybody's loved ones.

00:48When I say piles, we're talking about debris piles, 20, 30 feet high,

00:53that are big enough to have a whole RV still in them and not be seen.

01:01Well, there are two separate political questions here on whether the warnings could have been louder,

01:05whether it could have been clearer as well to allow them to escape or avoid the area as the rain first fell.

01:10Let's go to Charlottesville, Virginia.

01:12Let's bring in Larry Sabuotto, the founder, director of the University of Virginia, Centre for Politics.

01:18And also, as you can see on the other side of the screen, Rick Wilson, who is in Florida,

01:22author and co-founder of The Lincoln Project, a political consultant, former leading Republican strategist

01:27and author of two books, Everything Trump Touches Dies and Running Against the Devil,

01:32a plot to save America from Trump.

01:34It is great to see you both this evening.

01:36Larry, let's start with you and the political questions facing President Trump as he heads into Texas.

01:42He's called this disaster once in a hundred years that these things just happen.

01:47What do you make of that?

01:50Well, it's a continuation of this administration's denial that there is such a thing as human-caused climate change.

01:58It doesn't exist, you know, and all of these things just happen because the world changes with time.

02:03And conveniently, that allows them to do very little in the field and even cut the National Weather Service

02:11and NOAA pretty dramatically, which is going to reduce, by the way, the ability of the United States

02:17and the vulnerable states to respond to hurricanes this year.

02:22We've already had meteorologists with lots of experience telling us that they're not going to be able

02:28to predict the paths of these big hurricanes as accurately as they once could

02:33because they don't have the personnel at the federal level

02:37and they're not even putting up enough weather balloons in some areas.

02:41I mean, we're going back to the future, meaning the 19th century.

02:45Well, we saw, didn't we, the crossfire accusations during the California wildfires

02:50between Democrat Gavin Newsom and President Trump.

02:54It's very interesting when we look at what's going on,

02:56and I want to have a listen to this and get your take on it, both of you here,

03:00because this is the Republican governor for Texas, Greg Abbott, this week.

03:03I'm sure you've seen this.

03:04When he was asked, who is to blame for the lack of a sufficient early response,

03:10this was his response.

03:11You ask, and I'm going to use your words, who's to blame?

03:17Know this.

03:19That's the word choice of losers.

03:22Let me explain one thing about Texas,

03:25and that is Texas, every square inch of our state, cares about football.

03:31You could be in Hunt, Texas, Huntsville, Texas, Houston, Texas,

03:34any size community, they care about football.

03:37High school, Friday Night Lights, college football, or pro.

03:42And know this.

03:43Every football team makes mistakes.

03:46The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who's to blame.

03:50The championship teams are the ones that say,

03:53don't worry about it, man, we got this.

03:55We're going to make sure that we go score again,

03:57that we're going to win this game.

03:58Rick, that's an interesting take, isn't it?

04:01And a close relationship between the governor and the president,

04:03many suggestions that if this was a Democrat,

04:05the back and forth will be different.

04:09I think that's certainly correct.

04:11We've seen in his first administration and in this administration

04:14that Donald Trump's reactions to natural disasters in blue states

04:18are dismissive or hostile.

04:21And ironically, even though Greg Abbott is a close ally of Donald Trump,

04:26it still took FEMA four days to activate to go into Texas.

04:29So I don't think that we're in a moment here where we should listen to Greg Abbott

04:37trying to go through that painfully baroque and twisted set of excuses.

04:44This is a – there are plenty of folks to blame in Texas,

04:48in the community, and at the national level.

04:51But it would be a different story if he were a Democrat.

04:53Donald Trump would be using this to rev up his base

04:56and to generate a tidal wave of hate for a blue state or a blue state governor.

05:02I'm trying to work out, and just listening to Rick, Larry,

05:05there are two separate issues as I see it, and maybe you can bring me a third.

05:09But one is the doge cuts and whether this actually sticks.

05:12And it seems that the local weather office say that they had extra staff on duty that night,

05:17Thursday into Friday.

05:18So that would suggest that might be harder to stick.

05:20But there are tower systems used elsewhere in Kansas for tornadoes, for example,

05:26to get a southern air siren to go off very quickly to evacuate.

05:29And so I wonder if this is also about town officials in Kerrville

05:32not spreading the word quickly enough.

05:36Well, of course.

05:37And they had many opportunities to use a siren system.

05:41We're well away from really bad weather where I live in Charlottesville, Virginia,

05:46but we even have a siren system.

05:48Yes, it's expensive, if you call a million bucks expensive,

05:52but they had many opportunities to take care of this.

05:55Other towns around there had done it, and it was a giant screw-up.

05:59There's just no other way to put it.

06:01I won't use a football analogy.

06:03Football is a religion in Texas.

06:05But it's always finger-pointing.

06:07I'm surprised, and I bet Rick is too,

06:09that they haven't managed to blame this on Biden yet.

06:12Sure.

06:14Rick.

06:16Larry's exactly right.

06:20This is exactly the kind of structure that MAGA and the Trump political team

06:27use to communicate anything.

06:28If something is wrong, it's Joe Biden's fault.

06:30If something is great, it's Donald Trump's victory.

06:34Look, we saw in the local, excuse me, in the state legislature,

06:39last year they killed a bill, and they bragged about it,

06:43that would have provided funds to local communities to enhance their emergency preparedness

06:47communication systems.

06:49They didn't want to take the money.

06:50They didn't want to use the money because it was, you know,

06:53big government intruding in the local community.

06:55Well, I suspect that a lot of the people that have been swept away in these floods

06:58would have liked a little more government intrusion on the front end

07:01than rather than having to have their families go through a recovery process like the one

07:06that's so terrible right now.

07:07And there are reports, Rick, that President Trump is flip-flopping on the idea of FEMA,

07:13this emergency federal system to put in place.

07:16Just talk us through the context of that and what might be going on there.

07:20Well, look, there is a Project 2025 principle that FEMA is an example of wasteful government spending.

07:29But as someone who's in the South, as someone who has lived through natural disasters

07:33in the form of hurricanes and wildfires down here, you know,

07:37FEMA actually has a net benefit to red states that I think has been underscored

07:42by a lot of the sort of Doge and Project 2025 guys, whereas, you know,

07:49if FEMA falls apart or disappears or is closed, the state of Florida, the state of Georgia,

07:55the state of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina,

07:59all of whom have been hit in recent years with major storms where FEMA has played a constructive role,

08:05if that disappears, there will be not only a humanitarian consequence, I think,

08:10but a political consequence as well.

08:12I'm also interested about both of your takes, starting with you, Larry,

08:16about what you make of Trump, the statesman, the unifier going into this scenario,

08:20because let's face it, a time of disaster, kind of the nation, if not the world,

08:24looks at the leader, minded of President Obama after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 in New York,

08:31President George W. Bush in Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in New Orleans.

08:35There are moments where it matters to the nation, isn't it?

08:37And how that leader speaks and attempts to unify.

08:40Is that Trump's strong point, Larry?

08:44Certainly not.

08:45Look, when you think of Donald Trump, do you ever think of empathy?

08:49I certainly don't.

08:51And I doubt he's able to communicate much of it.

08:54He'll repeat the same lines he's used before about what a terrible tragedy,

08:57and it's a hundred year flood.

08:59But that doesn't help.

09:01They need assistance.

09:02And let me just make another point here that's connected.

09:06The Department of Homeland Security secretary and Trump himself have said,

09:11well, we've got to get rid of FEMA or drastically downsize it,

09:15because states should be doing this.

09:17States' rights.

09:18States' rights.

09:19Which is really interesting to me, being at a state university that has been practically taken over

09:25by the federal government and the Department of Justice,

09:28and they've done the same thing to Harvard and Columbia, and they're working on others.

09:32It's fascinating, isn't it?

09:34Just a little hypocrisy I thought I'd throw in there.

09:37That's very interesting.

09:38Rick, I mean, it probably is fair to say when there's a moment of contention,

09:42there's a strong point for Trump, an attack.

09:44Somebody, be it with the Iranians that you listen,

09:47but when it's about unifying, coming together,

09:50I'm guessing you probably agree with Larry's point.

09:54Absolutely.

09:55And Donald Trump is not a person with a tremendous degree of human empathy or understanding.

10:01He really is inwardly directed.

10:03We've seen this for a decade now, that this is a man who cares about Donald Trump.

10:08And it's hard for him to relate to people outside of the sort of showmanship and spectacle of his performances.

10:17He does not relate to people individually in a way that former presidents have.

10:23I mean, look, I was traveling one time with former President Bush at a moment where a young girl who came out,

10:29his dad had been killed in Iraq.

10:32And in the middle of a parade, the president walked over to her and stopped and hugged her.

10:36And it was a moment that was just heartbreaking, but it was real.

10:40Barack Obama, after the shootings in Charleston, had that moment of singing Amazing Grace with those church members.

10:52And it just broke everyone's heart because he was connecting with the families.

10:55Trump is not a man who connects with individual emotion or loss.

11:00And just a brief thought in the time that we have, maybe 30 seconds from both of you,

11:03but I'm going to mention this. It's gone viral this week and a possible conspiracy theory,

11:07but I'm going to mention it because of this.

11:09A rumor going around online, the Democrats have crowd seeded and manipulated the weather to punish Texans, to punish Republicans.

11:16Now, I say this with tongue in cheek, but cloud seeding is a thing, isn't it?

11:20It's not made up.

11:21In Utah, officials have been invested in heavenly in cloud seeding to generate ice crystals to bring about the rain.

11:27But it's one thing is this is being used.

11:31Another thing, it's a lazy theory turned into a wider conspiracy that gets momentum.

11:35What do you both make of it?

11:38Look, there are still...

11:40Maybe that's the answer.

11:42The laughter speaks volumes, Larry.

11:44Well, there are still surveys showing that 11 to 12 percent of Americans don't believe we landed on the moon.

11:53So you've got that element in the population.

11:56Let's just call them the poorly educated, you know, the ones that Trump said he loved.

12:00But it's just utterly absurd that one of our most extreme members of Congress, and there are plenty of them,

12:07but Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is at one end of extreme.

12:10She's got a bill in to turn into a felony any attempt to cede weather in any way, shape or form,

12:18even though, as you note, it's possible to do it and sometimes it's constructed.

12:22But this is the kind of insanity that we are dealing with in a society and an administration

12:29that really doesn't trust facts or truth or science.

12:3519th century.

12:37Both of you, thank you.

12:38Thank you, Larry.

12:39Thank you, Rick Wilson in Florida, author and co-founder of the Lincoln Projects.

12:42Larry as well, Sabato, founder and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

12:47Thank you both.

12:49Stay with us here on France 24.

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