The timing could not be more consequential for the president and his party. With the midterms approaching and control of the House and the Senate at stake, Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have dropped to 36 percent, according to the latest CNN poll, a potential danger zone for Republican candidates.
As if to underscore the political dimensions of the storm, the Department of Homeland Security offered a carefully worded statement on Wednesday that suggested it would suspend or scale back Mr. Trump’s top priority, the enforcement of immigration laws, in the affected areas while the storm was underway.
“Our highest priority remains the preservation of life and safety,” the department said in response to a question about its policies. “In consideration of these circumstances, there will be no immigration enforcement initiatives associated with evacuations or sheltering related to Florence, except in the event of a serious public safety threat.”
Democrats sought to make a political point as well, castigating the Trump administration for reallocating $10 million from FEMA accounts to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help detain and remove undocumented immigrants, although the department said the funds in question would never have been available for disaster response.
Natural disasters always carry high stakes for the president, focusing the public’s attention on a core function of government they tend to ignore except when their lives or property are at grave risk. And presidents have learned the hard way — as George W. Bush did after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when he drew criticism for telling his FEMA director Michael Brown, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” — to keep to a minimum credit-claiming and praise-heaping.
“It’s Trump’s nature to speak with hyperbole — ‘Great for us, we’re amazing’ — and we saw how that failed George W. Bush, and gave people a real sense that this was a president who did not understand what was happening on the ground and in their lives,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian whose book “The Great Deluge” chronicled the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
“There’s no way that the government ever looks good after a natural disaster, because there will always be the sense that more could have been done,” Mr. Brinkley said. “You don’t want to turn disaster into a political victory, but that is Trump’s instinct with everything.”
from Trends A to Z https://ift.tt/2Mqa2H5
via IFTTT
0 Comments