San Antonio anchor Stephania Jimenez fumed Saturday over a press conference that featured Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott thanking each other and President Donald Trump instead of giving immediate updates on the lethal floods in central Texas.
Other officials did the same and gushed over the emergency response, delaying pertinent details by nearly a half-hour, she said. (Watch the video below.)
“What I was struck by is that we really didn’t get any concrete information until 27 minutes into that news conference where you had the governor speak, you had Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speak for a while,” KSAT’s Jimenez said. “But you know what people are wanting is information.”
″… I don’t know what it is about people who run for federal office that whenever disasters like this happen, they take it upon themselves to first list all the names of people they want to thank. Um, not what we want to hear right now.”
Noem and the other officials did not take questions until 26 minutes and 30 seconds into the presser, after Abbott performatively showed himself signing a disaster-aid request for Trump, declaring the president’s love for Texas, expressing gratitude to Trump and asking for prayers multiple times.
Noem thanked Abbott and mentioned how she had talked repeatedly with Trump about the tragedy.
Other officials, including Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), followed in the same vein, thanking Trump, Abbott and Noem.
Most of the participants bragged about the response to the tragedy, seemingly to score political points.
“If they don’t have the latest information that they can give us, they should have said so,” Jimenez added. “My point is that they spent way too long thanking each other. And this is something that is bipartisan. We see it whenever there’s a disaster. Doesn’t matter which president is in office. For some reason federal leaders tend to thank each other for a long time before they tell us what we actually need.”
Jimenez hoped that leaders would get the message for the next press gathering on the disaster, which has claimed at least 82 lives since torrential rain generated flash floods in central Texas.
“People are on pins and needles waiting,” she said.
