Episodi

  • Texas got what it needed

    Texas got what it needed
    Oct 6 2026

    I joined John Solomon on Just the News tonight.

    Texas got what it needed on time and on target. The holdup was the $100,000 memo out of DHS. I overrode it. The greatest point of friction was in Washington, not on the river.

    The flood was a storm that stalled in the hills, not climate change. Two programs still put families in the floodplain: the National Flood Insurance Program and the flood maps.

    The fix is simple. Stop talking about the things you want to do, and only do the things you have to do.



    Get full access to Pope of FEMA at www.popeoffema.com/subscribe
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    8 min
  • FEMA and Its Connection to the Deep State

    FEMA and Its Connection to the Deep State
    Sep 20 2026
    Grant Stinchfield: Now, let’s talk about FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This agency is, I don’t know, it’s ripe with fraud. Why? Because the bureaucracy is so big. The contracts can be huge, and quite frankly, people take advantage of it.Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullin talked about the need for overhaul over there at FEMA. Listen to him this week.Mark Wayne Mullin (clip): It’s a constant battle of figuring out how we can cut the red tape and allow local authorities to have the ability to go out, respond, and get refunded faster. I think that is the number one conversation we have with the president. Every time we talk with him is about FEMA and how to reorganize it to get it back to what it was intended for.Grant: Look, it’s basically a lose-lose proposition. They can never get there fast enough, right? They can never be fully prepared. There’s always something that’s going to come up, but you do the best that you can. But when it gets like this, when it becomes so political, you know the agency has a problem. Who could forget this?FEMA employee (Fox News clip): And someone feels uncomfortable, we can’t go to that home. If you have loose dogs and someone on the team is comfortable with dogs and another person is not, we can’t go to that home because of safety precautions.Fox News host: So you fear the Trump houses—the people on FEMA were fearing the Trump houses like they were fearing people with vicious dogs in their backyard.FEMA employee: Exactly.Grant: Oh my gosh. Well. I want to bring in now to discuss all of this former acting Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator and author of Texas Flood. He was in charge of the response to that Texas flood back on July 4th a year ago. David Richardson is with us. David, welcome to the program.David Richardson: Thank you, Grant. Glad to be here.Grant: All right, it’s a pleasure to have you on. Let me ask you—you get into FEMA. What was it like, as far as, you know, we say the deep state, but the ruling class of bureaucrats, career politicians, whatever you want to call it—what was that like in that agency?David: Well, I gotta say this first. President Trump keeps his promises, and I know he wants to either radically transform FEMA or shut it down, and I know he will keep that promise.So what it was like for me when I arrived at FEMA: the first day, I walked around the seven floors at FEMA, kinda chatting with the folks, and what I heard was, “We are not ready to do our mission, and our morale is low.” And I’ve heard that in every federal organization I’ve worked with, but particularly at FEMA. So there was much fear. I arrived when it was in tatters, and I immediately began to orient them on their mission and being prepared for what they needed to do by writing a hurricane strategy and doing a few other things to tighten them up, to get them ready. And I’m glad I did because, as we’ll shortly discuss, there was a tragedy in Texas that we addressed. But between the time I arrived, which was mid-May, and that tragedy, I had a lot of work to do making sure that we had a strategy in place.Grant: Look, David, I don’t need to be some big-government bureaucrat to know that FEMA, you’re supposed to respond to hurricanes and wildfires and all these things. A hurricane strategy? FEMA didn’t have a strategy in place? I mean, who’s responsible ultimately for those failures?David: You know, my predecessor—I’m not sure what they were doing. They were very… they were busy doing stuff, but the first thing I asked when I got there was, “Do we have a strategy?” Now, a caveat to that: we did write the strategy. I sent it up to DHS headquarters, and they never approved the strategy. But here’s the deal. The plan is one thing, but the planning is everything. So we did the planning. We had it in place, even though it was never signed off by DHS headquarters. I still had the plan.So no, they weren’t ready for hurricane season when I got there, and I quickly brought them up to speed from them claiming that they weren’t ready and that they had low morale and they couldn’t do their job.Grant: Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Which brings us to the Texas floods. Now, I broadcast from Dallas. Sadly, there were many families that I know that lost children in those floods. This was the summer camps that were just devastated. So many kids losing their lives there. You had to organize response there. What was that like? Take me through it, and was FEMA ready?David: So we were ready when that came. When that happens. And there’s something to point out: there are actually FEMA programs that contributed to that tragedy in Texas. And they are the National Flood Insurance Program and the Flood Mapping Program. Both contributed to that disaster and the horrific things that happened there. But since I had planned with my team—Grant: Oh, wait, hold on, David. We need to—how did those ...
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    9 min
  • Downsizing FEMA and DHS

    Downsizing FEMA and DHS
    Sep 17 2026
    The National Security Hour · America Out Loud Talk RadioHosts: Dr. Michael Scheuer and “Colonel Mike” · Guest: Lt. Col. David RichardsonEditor’s note. This is a cleaned-up transcript prepared from the show’s auto-generated captions. Mis-heard names and terms have been corrected (e.g., Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, Camp Leatherneck, Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction, DOGE, Guadalupe River), repeated words and verbal stutters have been smoothed for readability, and station promotions and advertisement reads have been removed and marked. The substance and wording of the interview itself are preserved. Because both hosts speak throughout, a few host attributions are best-effort and may need correction.SEGMENT 1COL. MIKE: Welcome back to another episode of The National Security Hour on America Out Loud Talk Radio. Today we have a really big show — like Ed Sullivan used to say — and I’ll tell you why. We have with us Dave Richardson. He’s got a new book coming out. What was he doing? He was working with the government. So what could possibly go wrong working with the government, right? Dave, welcome to The National Security Hour. We want to discuss this new book, and we want to tell people how screwed up FEMA is.RICHARDSON: Thanks for having me. I greatly appreciate it. I’m really glad to be here to speak with you two gentlemen.COL. MIKE: So, Dave, why were you chosen to lead FEMA? What qualified you?RICHARDSON: Number one, I’ve got a background in strategy. I was a ground combat officer in the Marine Corps in a couple of different theaters of war. I went to the Marine Corps schools and essentially learned how to plan, build strategies, and do things like mission analysis. After I got out of the Marine Corps — partially due to what I did in Korea — I got into the countering weapons of mass destruction business. Eventually I was appointed by President Trump in 2020 to be the Assistant Secretary for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction. When Trump didn’t get back into office, I spent four years doing similar work. When he came back into office, I returned as the Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction — and I was immediately told they were going to shut it down. Look, I’m a small-government guy, partially because, as you said, the government can be a mess. The smaller the government, the smaller the mess. So I turned to shutting down Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction. I’d done a mission analysis on it. It’s simple: you go to all the laws, figure out what you should do by law, do only that, and match the people to the law and the capabilities. As I was shutting that down, the President had expressed a desire to do the same at FEMA — like had been done at the Department of Education, and then USAID. Since I was having success systematically shutting down Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction — and that wasn’t happening to the President’s approval at FEMA, which he wanted shut down or drastically reduced and rebranded — they removed the person running FEMA and sent me over. I made no bones about it when I got there. There was much howling and gnashing of teeth the day I told them I intended to carry out the President’s intent, because they knew what that was: shut it down, or drastically reform and rebrand it. I lay all this out in my book, Texas Flood 2025.COL. MIKE: So hang on — what did you find when you got to FEMA?RICHARDSON: As I say in my book, I found people wandering around the seven floors at 500 C Street SE, essentially saying their morale was low and that they couldn’t do their mission. I immediately turned to addressing both. A note on federal employee morale: it’s a perennial problem. It’s always low, because they have a sneaking suspicion their work doesn’t matter — and in some cases they’re right, because they’re stuck leaderless, with no one pointing out the mission and driving them toward it. So they wander around and complain. And even if one person is cut, they’ll go to the press and say, “We can’t do our mission — of 18,000 of us, there are only 17,999 left.”COL. MIKE: This almost sounds like Voice of America when they started cutting VOA — “You don’t understand, we need to check the birds in Ghana, the ones with that special whistle, we just can’t report anymore.” So you had a plan to shut it down. Mike and I both lived in Northern Virginia; you’re in Northern Virginia. We understand the morale — every year when the government’s going to shut down, the world ends. It’s War of the Worlds. So what was your plan?RICHARDSON: My plan was very similar to the one I did at Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction, and it’s simple. The military calls it “troop to task.” What do you have to do — your mission — and what are the subtasks? You figure out your specified tasks and subtasks and align the people to them. That tells you what ...
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    57 min