Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: Trump’s FEMA Boss Just Learned About Hurricane Season?!

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Tim Miller joins MSNBC’s Chris Jansing Reports to break down the looming chaos at FEMA under Trump's latest hire and the Trump administration's concerning pattern of appointing inexperienced and incompetent leaders to crucial roles.

Rural communities are being squeezed from every side. From rising health care costs to crumbling hospitals, from attacks on public schools to the fight for paid family and medical leave, farmers and small businesses are reeling from the trade war. And now, Project 2025 is back with a plan to finish what Elon Musk started. Trump and the Republicans won rural votes, then turned their backs on us. Join the One Country Project for the Rural Progress Summit, July 8th through the 10th.

This free virtual event brings together leaders like Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Governor Andy Beshear and others for real talk and real solutions. Together we'll tackle the most urgent issues facing rural America. Register today or learn more at ruralprogress.com. Hey y'all, Tim Miller here.

I was on with one of my favorites, Chris Jansing over on MSNBC daytime today. I got some feedback. I was delivering some deadpan commentary. So if you're wondering if I'm joking, I am. We were talking about how the Trump administration, which is supposed to be meritocratic, has hired some of the most incompetent people imaginable to run very serious government offices. It's like a Trump EI or Fox EI or dummy. What should we come up with? We got to coin something. Give us some ideas in the comments. I would use the R word since we can use it again, but that seems rude. And we don't want to coin that. So that's what we got into. A little discussion about the FEMA administrator

who doesn't know about hurricane season, the secretary of education who doesn't understand that it's MAGA people that are gonna be hurt by the deep draconian cuts to programs that serve a lot of folks in rural America. And we got into some of the related issues around that. So stick around, subscribe to the feed, and we'll see you right back here soon. Good day.

I'm Chris Jansing live from MSNBC headquarters in New York City. Confusion cuts and a critical mission. As FEMA braces for what's expected to be a worse than normal hurricane season, it's doing so with less money and fewer people than it had last year. The controversial comments from its new administrator raising the question, is FEMA up to the task? We start with the disarray that's gripping federal agencies as staffers try to overcome deep budget cuts and confusing marching orders to keep critical programs functioning. Take FEMA for example, where the new acting administrator, David Richardson, told staff on day two of hurricane season,

he didn't realize such a thing existed. While the remarks generated headlines nationwide, the DHS said it was a joke. Staff reportedly couldn't tell, but even if it was a joke, what's happening there is not funny. Plans for a new storm response are reportedly incomplete. So employees have been told to revert to last year's plan and get it done with just three

quarters of the 2024 staff. At the education department, a plan to slash funding would fall most heavily on programs that support, among other things, rural schools and at-risk students. All of it an attempt to keep up with the president's nonstop demands for deep cuts across the federal government, often leaving it up to agency leaders to figure out the details. Meanwhile, the Atlantic is shedding new light on something the president is doing, using his personal phone to talk to seemingly

anyone who has his number, despite repeated warnings that his calls could be compromised, an opening for adversaries like China to listen in. So Tim, let me go back to David Richardson who took over as the acting FEMA administrator just a month ago. He has no disaster response experience. He had a meeting with folks at the Wall Street Journal and they say he seemed surprised at the vast scope of FEMA's responsibilities and Reuters is reporting, quote, before joining FEMA Richardson was assistant secretary at DHS office for countering weapons of

mass destruction which he has told staff he will continue to lead. So he's going to be head of fighting weapons of mass destruction in addition to leading FEMA. Is heading up FEMA, Tim, not a full-time job? I think it's more than a full-time job. And you know, I think that we're really concerned about those DEI hires, Chris. Like this administration, they promise. They're fully committed to meritocracy.

They only want to bring the best in. That's why they've brought somebody in who has absolutely no experience to lead FEMA, who doesn't know there's a hurricane season, and they have a weekend talk show host leading the military. So, there's some mixed messages there. I think that the actual on the ground impacts here important to talk about.

Vaughn mentioned that Trump campaigned extensively really. It wasn't just kind of one-off thing in 2024 about the response to Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and how incompetent the Biden administration was supposedly when it comes to that. And now they're gutting the types of officials that would be responding to not just those types of hurricanes in the future, but that hurricane.

They have cuts to response to Hurricane Helene. People are not getting what they had been promised from the government under this administration. We reported at the Bullwork a couple months ago about a guy that was a chief of staff at one of the regional FEMA offices that was wrongly fired in the Doge Cuts when they sent one of those mass emails out and said, you're fired. And after that story, a couple hours later, you got a call from HR that was like, oh, well, you can be rehired again. Like this is not the way to

run an emergency management office. You know, surely there are some parts of the federal government that don't have that kind of urgent Responsiveness that is needed where you know, you could we could weather So to speak these types of issues like FEMA is not one of those and and we are coming into hurricane season now and I think that the The impact is going to be tangible for people and let me talk to you as well about the cuts the Department of Education the programs that look like they're going to take the for people. And let me talk to you as well about the cuts to the Department of Education. The programs that look like they're going to take the brunt of this are rural schools,

literacy instruction, students who are experiencing homelessness. They could lose 70% of their funding according to NPR. What's the political benefit in that? Yeah, well another merit hire there at the Department of Education, we should mention a former wrestling executive. And look, the Republicans, this is one thing that is not really unique to Trump

for a long time, Republicans have been talking about getting rid of the Department of Education. There is a lot of stuff in the Department of Education that I think could probably be redirected to other places. But not some of those programs you lay out. And as you mentioned, I think that there's this delay in this MAGA Republican Party, where there's some of these old habits from the old Republican Party that they are still acting on, old talking points, when now, you know, a lot of the mega voters are people that use these government services.

We're seeing that in Medicaid with that discussion happening on the Hill, but you also see it here at the Department of Education. Linda McMahon was questioned about that today by Chris Murphy, and like the result is they just don't have good answers. And I think they're hoping that the people that are suffering the consequences from this

are either loyal MAGA folks or that it won't actually matter to them politically because of the nature of how polarized the country is.