Trump Forced Governors To Flatter Him In Order To Receive Disaster Aid

According to interviews with several governors (both Democrats and Republicans), Donald Trump used to force the leaders of states to "ask him nicely" and then grovel if they wanted aid for their states following disasters. Trump made the Executive Branch all about himself, and it didn't matter that people's lives could be at stake as he slowed or outright withheld aid from certain areas. Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Whether you wanna do it or not. The biggest job of the president of the United States is of course, to be the president of the United States, which means everywhere everyone, even in Trump's words, the haters and the losers, right? You kind of have to look after everyone. But as we know from experience, that is absolutely not what happened during the Trump. And, and according to a new book called this will not pass by a pair of New York times writers. Donald Trump actually made governors, both Democrats and Republicans grovel to him after their states face natural disasters, and they needed federal aid. Two people on record saying this was the case. The first one is, uh, Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland. And the next was, uh, uh, Ned Lamont, the repo, uh, democratic governor, excuse me of Connecticut. Hogan says that he needed federal aid for his state.

And he was told you gotta ask me nicely. He cave obviously gotta help the people of the state Lamont, same situation, bad storms up in Connecticut. They needed federal aid. He calls up Donald Trump, the white house. And Trump says, you could ask me nicely, but Lamont was a little bit smarter with his. This is what it says. Lamont said. He decided to play along and flatter Trump into a agreeing telling him quote, it would mean a lot to the people. If Trump could bring it upon himself to authorize the aid, to which Trump responded personally, you get it.

This is what happened during those years, but here's the best part about this story is we don't need this story to tell us the us. We all watched it play out firsthand. And Donald Trump wasn't even secretive about it. Like he was very open in refusing to give aid to areas where the leader of that state or territory or whatever. Wasn't nice to him, California, exhibit a massive wild fires asking for FEMA, asking for federal aid, but state government, of course, state leaders obviously very critical of Donald Trump's ahead. Did he respond telling them you're not gonna get anything from me? You're on your own in this, maybe you should start raking the forests, right? We all remember that. Number two, Puerto Rico, following massive hurricane devastation. They needed more aid, more aid had been approved, but guess what? Donald Trump didn't wanna give it to him.

Of course, because one of the, uh, governors down there was critical of Donald Trump. So, oops, you don't get the aid that you've request said that your people desperately need people were dying in the streets. And Trump said, no, you don't get it because you've been mean to me, exhibit C New York, early days of COVID right? So many people with COVID infections that they had to set up little tents in their parking garages of the hospitals to start treating patients out there. They didn't have ventilators. They didn't have PPE. How did Trump respond? Because Andrew Cuomo was apparently not nice to him. Just like he apparently wasn't nice to anybody. Trump sent all that down here to Florida. We didn't need it at the time. We eventually did. And still ended up not having enough because our governor, you know, turned a blind eye to COVID and allowed 70,000 plus people in his state to die.

But that's what he did instead of giving that stuff to New York that was currently overwhelmed. He sent it to red state buddies, Texas and Florida. And according to the book, Texas and Florida were actually the only two states in the country were those governors because they had such a good relationship with Trump. They weren't for forced to grovel or beg or flatter him in order to get aid, whatever they needed. They got it. I'm sure the story would be a little bit different now as Trump doesn't seem to like Ron DeSantis, but that's what happened. People died as a result of Donald Trump, holding grudges against these governors people died. And honestly, if you ask me, that's one of the bigger Trump scandals that everybody seems to have forgotten about, right? You know, we talk about the potential criminal activity, the investigation in Georgia investigations in New York,