FEMA Leader Didn’t Know Hurricane Season Existed

David Richardson, the acting head of FEMA, told staffers during a recent meeting that he didn’t even know that “hurricane season” existed. Four sources confirmed this exchange to Reuters in a major report that was released this week. Once the story started making headlines, the Trump administration immediately came out with their usual excuse – that he was just joking and everyone is being mean – but that isn’t enough to put the minds of those of us who are in the crosshairs of hurricanes at ease. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Hurricane season began on June 1st, this past Sunday. But don't tell that to the guy who's actually running fema, which is, you know, pretty much our lifeline when the hurricanes do hit us, because that man that Donald Trump installed about a month or so ago, he's the acting director of fema, David Richardson. He apparently told his staff in a meeting last week an all hands on deck meeting that he didn't even know that hurricane season was a thing. The man running the organization that again, is, is our first, uh, you know, responders, basically national first responders for hurricanes and other natural disasters, told his staffers, I didn't know hurricane season was a thing. And that is according to four people who were present at the meeting who spoke to Reuters. Four of them confirmed it. David Richardson didn't know hurricane season existed, and we're supposed to rely on this man to provide us aid and relief and comfort when we get devastated by a hurricane, which for the record, the NOAA is predicting an above average hurricane season for us this year with, uh, six to 10 named storms and five of them potentially being massive storms.

So those of us along the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic Coast, we're not exactly sleeping easy, knowing that the guy running FEMA only just now learned that there is in fact a hurricane season. God forbid somebody tell him about fire season out west, that'll probably blow his mind. This government that Donald Trump has assembled is without a doubt, the most incompetent group of human beings that anyone could ever assemble to do anything. I mean, this is supposed to be his cabinet, but these numb nuts aren't even smart enough to put together an actual cabinet. Like if you got a piece of furniture from Ikea, handed it to Donald Trump's entire cabinet and said, you guys put this together, it's never gonna get finished. That's how dumb each and every one of these people are from Health and Human Services with RFK Jr to the State Department with Rubio, the Pentagon, with Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and of course David Richardson. These people are morons, but they're not morons. We can dismiss, okay? We can't just say, oh, well, stupid people. Uh, yeah, these are stupid people who get to make decisions that could be life or death decisions. That's why this is so dangerous. But don't worry, folks, because the good folks at fema, you know, department of Homeland Security, they're telling us he was just joking, and y'all are

Being super mean. Here is what a DHS spokesperson said. Despite mean-spirited attempts to falsely frame a joke as policy, there is no uncertainty about what FEMA will be doing this hurricane season. Ha, it was a joke. Oh my God. He told all of his staffers. He didn't know it existed. Nobody laughed. Uh, but it was totally a joke. Now, according to the four sources who spoke to Reuters, it didn't seem like a joke. He didn't say it as a joke. And again, nobody laughed. He said it as a fact. But this is how this administration responds. This is how Republicans have started responding, right? Anytime they say something that's mean, bad, horrible, stupid, wrong, whatever, they're like, well, that was just a joke. You, you liberals can't take a joke. Why don't you ever laugh? Why don't you ever have fun? Like, we're, we're laughing, but we're also terrified that we have the dumbest people on the planet running our federal government, including our disaster response.