Gov. Andy Beshear, D-Ky., offered some praise for President Donald Trump’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on Tuesday and said the administration had improved its customer service and had been effective on the ground.
While discussing the impact of natural disasters with “At Our Table” podcast host Jaime Harrison, Beshear said he believed the American people agree that the federal government should be there at their darkest moments, “where through no fault of your own, a hurricane, a tornado, flooding has torn through your communities.”
Beshear gave credit to Trump’s administration during the interview before suggesting it was something the president wants to scale back.
“The irony of all of it to me is, is Trump’s FEMA on the ground has done a good job in Kentucky. They have bettered their customer service. We’re not getting nearly as many complaints. They’re getting a lot of money through individual assistance out to families, especially after flooding. It’s actually a credit to his administration, and it seems to be the thing that they want to undo or unwind. Hopefully, him seeing it personally has an emotional impact because we need FEMA for that emergency response,” Beshear said.
Just days after taking office in January, Trump announced an executive order to completely overhaul or possibly eliminate FEMA, telling reporters, “I’ll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA.”
“I think, frankly, FEMA is not good,” the president added.
Beshear also said public assistance was still needed for some areas of his state.
“And one thing we haven’t seen is that public assistance — really since February — that helps out Laurel County, where London, Kentucky is, and Pulaski County, where Somerset is. Both of those counties went 80-plus percent for the president, but he hasn’t approved public assistance that would help them as county governments since that tornado,” he added.
The Democratic governor, who has said he’s considering running for president in 2028, also discussed some criticisms of the Democratic Party, specifically where the Biden administration could have done better.
“We’ve got to make sure that we don’t get in our own way. And what I mean by that is we’ve got to be able to look at things that maybe we should have done better. And, as we go forward, make sure that we are not tripping ourselves up,” Beshear told Harrison, pointing to specific examples from Biden’s presidency.
“One of my favorite programs that the Biden administration passed was the abandoned well-capping program. These are abandoned oil and gas wells that are pumping methane up into the environment, right? It’s causing global warming. Capping them is the only program I’ve ever seen where the environmentalists and the industry were both on board. So, the program first comes out, we cap more than anybody else in the nation — and then they double the regulations for the second round,” he said.
Beshear continued, “And what happens? It almost all stops.”
“We’re doing a bunch of archaeological studies, but we’re not capping those wells,” the Democratic governor said.
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He also pointed to efforts by the Biden administration to expand internet access.
“We don’t have one inch of fiber in the ground right now. We created so many rules. We had to get the subcontractor, the subcontractor, and the subcontractor before we ever got any money. And to this day, all the money is still sitting with the federal government when the states are supposed to get it out. So, we’ve got to be effective,” Beshear said.
“I like to think we got to be the common sense, common ground, get stuff done type of party.”
