Transcript: Trump Press Sec Rages at Media over Floods, Exposing MAGA
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 9 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
As of this recording, at least 109 people have been pronounced dead from the devastating floods that have pounded down on Texas for five days. Distressingly, 27 of those deaths occurred at a summer camp for girls, and the death toll continues to rise as search and rescue efforts grow more more frantic. This week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt lashed out angrily at the news media and at Democrats for raising questions about whether any of the administration’s policies bear any blame for the disaster’s impact. But what exactly is wrong with debating the role of public policy in producing such horrible outcomes? Is that something we should debate? And when is the right time to debate it? New Republic staff writer Kate Aronoff has a new piece arguing that Democrats absolutely should talk about GOP policies and priorities at times like this, so we’re talking to Kate about the whole situation. Hey Kate, thanks for coming on.
Kate Aronoff: Thanks for having me.
Sargent: So Kate, everything that’s been reported about this disaster just boggles the mind. The suddenness of the flooding, the scale of it, the speed of it, the sheer destructiveness in such rapid order—it’s all really hard to comprehend. There’s been a lot of debate about whether things like the staff shortages at the National Weather Service made things worse. And some focus on Trump’s promise to end the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. You looked into this. Can you just bring us quickly up to speed on where the disaster is, and on that debate about apportioning blame?
Aronoff: Yeah. As you mentioned, over 100 people have been confirmed dead. There’s still ongoing search and rescue efforts, and there’s more rain expected for that specific area of Texas this week. And the debate about why this flood was so deadly and why the response times were so slow is ongoing. The debate at first focused on the National Weather Service. So the National Weather Service is part of NOAA, which the Trump administration has targeted for 20 percent cuts despite it already operating at a staffing deficit for many, many years. And it was Texas officials, actually, who first called out the National Weather Service and tried to pin some of the blame for this destruction on them. And what we see is that’s not right. So the National Weather Service did its job despite these federal attacks on the agency. The NWS began to issue warnings very early in the day on Thursday and then increasingly dire warnings through the evening and then until the early hours of the morning when the flooding hit this extreme point, dumping four months worth of rain in a matter of hours, raising the level of the Guadalupe River nearly 30 feet within just a few hours, 29 feet within 45 minutes. There are a lot of questions remaining as to what role federal cuts and Texas Republican policy have had in making this disaster so deadly.
Sargent: And they’re legit questions, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is really angry at the media and Democrats for raising some of these questions. Listen to what she told reporters.
Karoline Leavitt (audio voiceover): Unfortunately, in the wake of this once-in-a-generation natural disaster, we have seen many falsehoods pushed by Democrats such as Senator Chuck Schumer and some members of the media. Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie, and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning.
