Two stories for our time

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, former President Donald Trump has blasted the Biden administration for its handling of the disaster — going so far as to accuse Democratic leaders of ignoring the needs of Republican storm victims.

But a review of Trump’s record by POLITICO’s E&E News and interviews with two former Trump White House officials show that the former president was flagrantly partisan at times in response to disasters and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.

Mark Harvey, who was Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, told E&E News on Wednesday that Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after deadly wildfires in 2018 because of the state’s Democratic leanings.

But Harvey said Trump changed his mind after Harvey pulled voting results to show him that heavily damaged Orange County, California, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa, Harvey said.

The exchange has not been previously reported.

“We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” said Harvey, who recently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris alongside more than 100 other Republican former national security officials.

Both Harvey and Olivia Troye, a former Trump White House homeland security adviser who backed up Harvey’s claim, say Trump is approaching Hurricane Helene with a similar mindset. They say he is politicizing a disaster that has killed more than 170 people in six states. And Troye, who has endorsed Harris for president, accused Trump of trying to divert attention from his own political liabilities on disaster responses.

She said if Trump wins the White House again, he will view disasters through a political lens that values personal loyalty over damage considerations.

“It’s not going to be about that American voter out there who isn’t even really paying attention to politics, and their house is gone, and the president of the United States is judging them for how they voted, and they didn’t even vote,” Troye said in an interview Wednesday.

Troye, who played a lead role in federal disaster response, said local political leaders regularly called her office begging for help because Trump refused to sign documents approving aid. Troye said she had to repeatedly enlist former Vice President Mike Pence to apply pressure.

Added Harvey: “There’s no empathy for the survivors. It is all about getting your photo-op, right? Disaster theater to make him look good.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to an E&E News request seeking comment.

On Monday, Trump turned a visit to flood-damaged Valdosta, Georgia, into a partisan attack. He falsely claimed the Biden administration — and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) — were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” and that GOP governors couldn’t get the president on the phone.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, both Republicans, confirmed that wasn’t true and praised the federal response. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) also applauded the Biden administration’s response to Helene, which damaged the southeastern part of the state.

While Trump is alone among political leaders in accusing President Joe Biden of ignoring the Republican victims of Hurricane Helene, his four years in the White House show that at times he played favorites with disaster response.

‘They love me in the Panhandle. … What do they need?’
In early 2019, shortly after taking office, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida met with Trump at the White House to ask a favor.

Months earlier, while DeSantis was running for governor, Hurricane Michael had caused massive damage in the Florida Panhandle.

DeSantis asked: Would the president order the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay 100 percent of recovery costs instead of its customary 75 percent?

“This is Trump country — and they need your help,” DeSantis told the president, according to the Republican governor’s autobiography, “The Courage to Be Free.”

“They love me in the Panhandle,” Trump replied, according to DeSantis’ book, published in 2023 as he was preparing to run for president. “I must have won 90 percent of the vote out there. Huge crowds. What do they need?”

And this is where all this ends up:

A Seattle doctor whose medical license was suspended after she participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was shot and killed after pointing a gun at two people delivering paperwork at her West Seattle home on Tuesday.

A 40-year-old man whom police have not identified shot Tamara Towers Parry, 57, multiple times in the torso outside her Southwest Hudson Street home around 1 p.m., according to the Seattle Police Department and the King County Medical Examiner’s Office. Police have not arrested anyone and are not looking for suspects, spokesperson Detective Brian Pritchard said Wednesday.

Members of Towers Parry’s family did not immediately respond to inquiries Wednesday.

Towers Parry, who was in the midst of eviction proceedings, came out of her house and pointed a shotgun at the two men before the 40-year-old, armed with a handgun, opened fire. In a phone call Wednesday, Pritchard said the men did not work in law enforcement and were not there to evict Towers, but he would not describe the paperwork they were delivering.

Tuesday’s shooting happened less than two weeks after Towers Parry’s home was foreclosed on and scheduled to be sold at a Sept. 20 auction, King County housing records show. Towers Parry had failed to make about $24,000 in mortgage payments and still owed more than $225,000 on the home, which she previously shared with her ex-husband, according to the records.

A photo taken of the house on Tuesday showed a large U.S. flag hanging from the home’s front window underneath the word “QAnon,” the name of a far-right conspiracy theory that gained traction online after the 2016 election of former President Donald Trump.

A divorce, a multiple sclerosis diagnosis, increasing debt and an apparent descent into conspiracy theory marked the final years of Towers Parry’s life.

Troubles for Towers Parry may have begun as recently as 2015 when she developed a “rapidly progressive neurologic” condition while working for Swedish Health Services, according to a 2017 court filing in the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Washington.

Towers Parry said she had multiple sclerosis and wanted to keep the Hudson Street home so she could attend her regular neurology appointments in Seattle, according to a 2018 divorce record filed in King County Superior Court.

The couple finalized their divorce in October 2019, records show. About 15 months later, video shared online appeared to show Towers Parry participating in the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., wearing a coat and carrying a flag both festooned with a large letter “Q.”

“Hi patriots, it’s Dr. Tammy,” she says in the video while standing in front of the U.S. Capitol building. “We just stormed the Congress and I’m going to tell you right now: It was wild.”

In the video, Towers Parry describes entering the government building and being pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed.

“Compared to what our Founding Fathers did, it’s the least we could do,” she says in the video. “Joe Biden did not win. He’s hopefully going to prison.”

Social media users quickly identified Towers Parry in the days after the rally, drawing scrutiny to institutions she was once affiliated with.

The University of Washington School of Medicine, where student newspaper The Daily said Towers Parry had graduated from in 1994, confirmed she had never worked at the school in a Jan. 8, 2021, post on X. Swedish Health Services also posted about Towers Parry on X that day, saying she had not worked for the hospital group since May 2015. And the Washington Medical Commission announced on X the same day that it was processing multiple complaints about “Dr. Tammy Towers.”

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While the commission investigated the complaints against Towers Parry, her ex-husband filed a declaration in King County Superior Court in August 2021, demanding she refinance the Hudson Street home according to the conditions of their divorce.

“[Towers Parry] has demonstrated that she is unwilling to execute the documents necessary to alleviate me of the debt on the Hudson property,” the ex-husband wrote in his court filing. “She has simply chosen to ignore the issue, and instead traveled to Washington, D.C. to be part of an uprising to overthrow the government.”

About five months later, Washington Medical Commission health law judge John F. Kuntz indefinitely suspended Towers Parry’s medical license after determining she had engaged in unprofessional conduct in violation of state law, state records show.

Trump and his minions are the scum of the earth, and the spectacle of all of them hanging upside down at an Esso station would be a fitting end for each and every one of them.

But I confess to ambivalent feelings about the consequences of what they have collectively wreaked on people like Towers Perry, who at one point was probably a decent person, and a valuable member of her community.