Late last week, there were 16 requests on Donald Trump’s desk for federal disaster relief. The president prioritized a request from Ohio, despite the fact that several other appeals had been waiting longer.

Why? So that he could incorporate his approval for the request into a campaign speech. Politico reported:

Trump authorized the aid the day before he campaigned for the Republican senator in a tight election battle and told a cheering Vandalia, Ohio, crowd that he approved the money at Republican Ohio Sen. Jon Husted‘s request.

“Yesterday, I also signed a special disaster relief declaration at the request of Jon [Husted] and Bernie [Moreno] and everybody,” Trump said at the Oct. 3 rally, referring to Ohio’s other Republican senator.

For good measure, at the same event, the president suggested he would look unfavorably at fund requests from Amy Acton, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in the Buckeye State.

“I’m not going to help her, probably,” Trump said. “She hates me, I guess.”

This week, he went further, posting an item to his social media that read in part, “I just spoke with Tom Tiffany, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next Governor of the Great State of Wisconsin. I told Tom that I will be approving 17.9 Million Dollars for the Severe Storms and Tornadoes that Wisconsin has experienced. …18 Million Dollars should help, A LOT. See you soon Wisconsin — I LOVE YOU ALL!”

Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, who was actually responsible for requesting the disaster aid and said he had heard nothing from the White House about this, issued a statement calling the president’s announcement “complete and total bulls—.”

“Clearly, President Trump and Congressman Tiffany are continuing to play politics with emergency aid that’s meant to help communities recover,” Evers added.

The key word in that sentence was “continuing” — because Trump’s brazen efforts to politicize federal disaster aid keep happening. Indeed, it was just a few weeks ago when the president headlined a rally in North Carolina and told the audience he wouldn’t send relief funds unless they elected former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley to the Senate.

He was apparently kidding, but given the circumstances, there was nothing funny about his ugly attempt at humor.

A couple of weeks before the North Carolina event, Trump used his social media platform to announce seven disaster relief requests that he had just approved. They all had one thing in common: In each instance, the president directly connected the federal funds to upcoming elections, recent election results or both.

White House officials have repeatedly argued, on the record, that there’s “no politicization to the president’s decisions on disaster relief” and that Trump handles disaster requests “with great care.” And yet, the president can’t seem to shake his habit of including endorsements for Republican candidates while approving funds, explicitly connecting campaign messages to aid requests in ways no other American president has ever done before.

What’s more, given the frequency with which he has done this — it has happened in each of the past four months — Trump has clearly abandoned the pretense. He’s not even trying to keep up appearances or pretending to approach the issue in responsible ways.

There’s also the data to consider: The Associated Press reported in July on a data analysis that showed Trump has denied aid to Democratic-led states in disproportionate ways, which dovetailed with a Politico report from March that pointed to the administration’s own statistics and concluded that the incumbent president “has rejected disaster aid for Democratic-run states at the highest rate in the 47-year history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

“Never in my lifetime has a president treated disaster relief as a political cudgel,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, in response to the data. “What President Trump has done to politicize disaster relief and hold up support for Americans who need it … is frankly unforgivable.”

The senator made those comments in early July. The problem is much worse now.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Ahead of the midterms, Trump isn’t even being subtle about politicizing disaster aid appeared first on MS NOW.

Author: Source Author

From MS Now.