Monday on MSNBC’s “The Weeknight,” former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro said that President Donald Trump doesn’t understand how government works.

In June, from the Oval Office, Trump said, “We want to wean off of FEMA. And we want to bring it down to the state level. A little bit like education we’re moving it back to the states so the governors can handle, that’s why they are governors. The FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment, very, very expensive and it doesn’t get the job done.”

Castro said, “Right, there is a perfect example of what you get when you have a president that not only has zero experience in government, doesn’t understand how it works, hadn’t bothered to learn how it works, also has no respect for its role in our society. He doesn’t understand the relationship between the federal, state and local governments. But also just completely unrealistic about the ability of state and local governments to be able to handle natural disasters. They absolutely need the resources that an  agency like FEMA brings.”

He added, “I also think it’s fair to say that what we see here is a failure of leadership on all of these levels. The federal level, what the DOGE cuts have done and layoffs have done, probably on key staffing and the ability of the San Angelo and San Antonio National Weather Service offices to do outreach to help warn people.”

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