Trump Regime

Real Emergency, Fake Orders

Written by SK Ashby

You may recall that Trump said he had ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to cut off disaster aid for the victims of last year's deadly wildfires, but he apparently never actually did.

Documents obtained or not obtained, as it were, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and a statement from FEMA confirm that Trump never officially handed down an order that only exists as a tweet.

"We never got any such directive," Brandi Richard, a FEMA spokesperson, told BuzzFeed News. "That's evidenced by the fact that work is still being done and we continue to support wildfire survivors across the state."

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, further confirmed the news in a Freedom of Information Act request filed Jan. 9 on Muckrock, the same day the president tweeted his order.

"We conducted a comprehensive search of files," FEMA said in a letter. "Unfortunately, we were unable to locate or identify any responsive records."

If there's a lesson to be learned here it's that we can't take all of Trump's statements at face value, but we obviously knew that already.

With that said, this does not necessarily mean Trump will not eventually get around to it. Some of his tweets actually do become official orders. Trump initially announced his war on transgender military service in a tweet, but the Pentagon did not receive orders from the White House until several months later.

It has been less than two months since Trump threatened to pull FEMA out of California. There's still plenty of time for him to do the wrong thing.