President Donald Trump lashed out at a reporter as ‘evil’ on Friday after she dared to ask him about the warnings given by the authorities before the deadly Texas floods.
The president sat down with officials in Kerrville after touring the devastation from the flash flooding one week ago. He also met with first responders as the search for the missing continues.
When Trump opened the roundtable event up for questions, it did not go the way he wanted, and he immediately became defensive.
A reporter who identified herself as from CBS News in Texas asked the president about the lack of warning.
“Several families we heard from are obviously upset because they say those warnings, those alerts didn’t go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved. What do you say to those families?”
“Well, I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances,” Trump started, before tearing into the reporter.
“Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you,” the president said. “I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.”
The president said he thought there had been heroism and people had done an incredible job. He did not address the reporter’s question about what he would tell victims’ families about not getting warnings.
“It’s easy to sit back and say, ‘Oh, what could have happened here or there, you know? Maybe we could have done something differently?’ This was a thing that has never happened before,” Trump said.
The president then went on to call on pro-MAGA reporter Brian Glenn for a question, and several other reporters who heaped praise on the president.
But the attack on the reporter who asked the first question did not stop there. Conservative Rep. Chip Roy took a moment to slam the media while speaking.
“For all of the media clamoring to ask that ridiculous first question and try to point fingers, the governor said it best when he said pointing fingers is for losers,” the GOP lawmaker said.
However, the devastated community is grappling amid the tragedy with questions remaining over whether there was more that could have been done.
At least 120 people were killed in the disaster, and more than 160 more are still missing as recovery efforts continue.
While the National Weather Service issued two flood warnings overnight before the disaster hit, some officials, including Kerrville’s mayor, said they were not aware of the flooding until hours later as the threat built in the middle of the night.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that at least three times, local officials requested money for a flood warning system. They were rejected by the state despite more federal funds being made available for disaster-reduction projects.
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