President Donald Trump on Friday halted Democratic California Rep. Brad Sherman’s defense of using the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for the aftermath of the wildfires, calling attention to how insurance companies have left the state.
Trump and First Lady Melania Trump traveled to Southern California on Friday afternoon to tour areas devastated by the wildfires in early January, specifically seeing Southern California’s coastal town of Pacific Palisades. During a sit-down with state lawmakers and local officials, Sherman defended FEMA, saying that the number of available resources to assist the state would shrink without the agency’s involvement.
“How many people do you have in California?” Trump asked. “How many million people do you have? You have 40 million people. You’re not going to get a few thousand people. The problem with FEMA is they come from all over the country. They end up in arguments with your people from California because they want to do it a totally different way. I can live either way, but you haven’t gotten very much done with FEMA. All you have to do is look at North Carolina. It’s one of the great disasters of all time.”
“You know who came in and fixed North Carolina or the process? Other states. People from all over the country came. You have the same thing. You have a lot of people from all over the country. Getting the people is not a problem. Getting the organization is a big problem. FEMA is incompetently run, and it costs about three times more than it should cost,” Trump added.
During an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday, Trump first teased his disapproval of FEMA, saying that “all it does is complicate everything” before adding that he’d rather see states “take care of their own problems.”
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On Friday, Trump elaborated about what he said were FEMA’s shortcomings, saying he hopes to “spend money on schools instead of giving money to bureaucracy,” adding he’s a builder and, at that, “a very good builder.”
“FEMA has a standard that’s so slow. They want permit on permit on permit, and then they want permits on top of that. If you use FEMA, you’ll be here for a long time,” Trump added. “What I’m saying is get the city, get the state to give you immediate 24-hour permits. These people are going to build their own homes. They’re going to get them built fast.”
However, Sherman pressed again, asking how residents affected by the fires would finance and rebuild their homes. Trump could be heard attempting to answer the Democratic lawmaker before Sherman said that without Trump’s help, “they’re only going to get $43,000” from the federal government.
“Well, you know, you did something, Brad, where every insurance company in the country left California. That’s why you have no insurance, because you made it so impossible. People that think like you made it so impossible,” Trump said. “Brad, every insurance company — ”
Sherman jumped in again, saying he didn’t know what the president knew about his “thinking,” before Trump said how he’d never seen a state where so many homeowners didn’t have insurance.
“I’ll tell you this. I’ve never seen a state where almost nobody has insurance. I said, ‘What happened?’ They said, like, six months ago, they all left. Two years ago, they had different quadrants, but they left. You have very little insurance here. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said.
In March 2024, California’s largest insurer, State Farm, announced it would not renew 72,000 policies within the state, citing inflation and regulations that it said made operations unsustainable. While the announcement affected only 2% of State Farm’s total policies, the insurer said the changes were necessary to better align with current risks, which had raised prices in the state.
Prior to State Farm’s cut in 2023, the company announced in May that it would no longer accept new homeowner insurance applications. The California Department of Insurance told Politico that climate change was the driving factor, making it “beyond” the state’s control.
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