Donald Trump keeps pushing the vile claim that federal officials are withholding disaster aid from GOP areas devastated by Hurricane Helene. This has now backfired, focusing media attention on Trump’s own hyper-politicization of disaster relief as president. To wit: Two former Trump officials told Politico that Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after wildfires in 2018 due to the state’s Democratic lean. We talked to one of those officials—Olivia Troye, a senior homeland security official in the Trump administration and now a leading critic of the former president—about Trump’s disastrous tenure, and what she told is is not pretty.

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