ASHLEY PARKER: President Trump has wrapped up his tour of Central Texas where he met with state officials and those affected by last week's devastating floods.

It's a side of Trump that we don't often see, that of consoler-in-chief.

But we also saw another side of the president this week, one who seems to be fed up with Vladimir Putin.

Joining me tonight to discuss all things Trump are Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The New York Times, Tarini Parti is a White House reporter at the Wall Street Journal, Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent at The New York Times, and Nancy Youssef is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Thank you guys all for being here, and let's just jump right in.

I am actually old enough to remember George W. Bush comforting the first responders at Ground Zero after September 11th and Barack Obama spontaneously breaking into Amazing Grace after the deadly shooting at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

I also remember President Trump throwing paper towels when touring hurricane damage in Puerto Rico during his first term.

And, Peter, you're even older than I am.

PETER BAKER, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: A little bit.

ASHLEY PARKER: You have.

Unfortunately, just a little.

But, yes, you have covered six presidencies starting with Bill Clinton.

How does President Trump compare to his predecessors in this role as consoler-in-chief?

PETER BAKER: Yes.

This is not his strength, right?

President Trump has a lot of strengths, but consoling people, not one of them, empathy, not one of them.

You're right, I've been covering president's going to disaster zones since President Clinton.

I remember traveling with him to a big giant flood in Grand Forks, North Dakota, is my first one.

And what presidents from Clinton on have always done, of course, is to find ways to connect with people on the ground, to show that they're there, that they not only are going to bring resources to the federal government, but they understand their plight and that's just not where Trump is.

He is sometimes very good at mobilizing resources, but he is not good, I think, at connecting people who are in pain.

ASHLEY PARKER: Although today in Texas, we did see a version of him doing this.

Let's watch.

DONALD TRUMP: I've gone to a lot of hurricanes, a lot of tornadoes.

I've never seen anything like this.

This is a bad one.

We just visited with incredible families that -- I mean, look, they've been devastated.

They lost their child or two children and just hard to believe what -- I've never seen anything like it.

ASHLEY PARKER: I mean, so, no paper towels this time.

Tarini, is this a side of the president?

We just don't see?

Is he growing into the role?

TARINI PARTI, White House Reporter, The Wall Street Journal: He was more empathetic than we've seen him in the past.

And what we saw in the last few days is Secretary Kristi Noem talking to him, telling him stories about what she had seen on the ground.

And you could tell he had been, you know, moved by the tragedies at the camp in particular and he brought that up today.

So, it was a different side of him.

But he also wanted to, of course, tout his administration's response, which is different from what we've seen how other administrations have handled it.

It's been a very scaled back federal response.

They're relying more on state and local officials, and he also tried to make that point, that even though they're doing things differently, that, in his view, this has been a success even though there are still a lot of people missing and search and rescue teams are still looking for them.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, White House Correspondent, The New York Times: There's almost like two sort of wings to a president's response when it comes to a disaster, the rhetoric and the empathizer-in-chief, but then also you mentioned mobilizing resources.

That's the other part of it, and I think we have to look at President Trump's record with FEMA in its entirety in this second term.

I traveled with him to North Carolina and then he went to California and his first week in office and, yes, he had some of those moments of empathy and interacting with some of these people who were suffering.

He also mused about shuttering the nation's disaster relief agency, in his time in office, in the second term, a large portion of workers from FEMA have also lost their jobs at this point.

The Department of Homeland Security, we wrote we wrote a story that they were reviewing grants ranging from police - - supporting police departments to disaster resilience and basically reviewing whether localities were aligned with the administration's DEI and immigration agenda in order to continue giving out those grants.

Kristi Noem is facing a lot of criticism right now for a new rule in which grants above $100,000 she actually needs to review when people are citing that new rule in basically claiming a slowed down response.

Here we won't know really the grade of the federal government's response to this disaster for some time.

It's still very soon.

But all of these reasons are why the administration might be facing more questions and scrutiny than usual.

It's the president's comments before the disaster, as well as what we saw today.

ASHLEY PARKER: Great.

Oh, sorry.

It looks like you're going to say something.

PETER BAKER: No, I was going to -- NANCY YOUSSEF, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: I was going to say, you know, you're right.

I mean.

The administration can't stop a flood but this was a failure of preparedness.

And what struck me this week is how much we've been talking about response by government, not only on the federal level, but at the local level, starting all the way from when the camp built these new facilities using this $5 million grant a few years ago, even though it was in floodplains, local officials not willing to answer questions about the systems they had in place to respond to this and whether they were adequate on the state level, and as you point out, on the federal level.

And what's been interesting to me in watching the coverages, people mentioning actually names of people who could have made a difference.

The National Weather Service, for example, Paul Yura, who is in charge of sort of responsiveness for that area, had retired just last year after 32 years in service.

And so it's been striking to me how much we've been looking at responsiveness across government and not able to really get at what level the system broke down and what needs to be done going forward to make those fixes.

ASHLEY PARKER: Well, and in a moment where Trump has talked about abolishing FEMA, this would certainly seem to call for FEMA to, at the very least, exist.

Peter, is there any change of thinking in the White House about the role of FEMA at all?

PETER BAKER: Yes.

You saw them backing off that, right?

So, the president had said he would phase it out, that was his phrase, by the end of the year.

Now, they're not talking about that so much.

Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management Budget, told reporters today, no, we just make a reform it.

We're not going to get rid of it.

We're going to make it better.

Okay, well, fine.

That's a different story.

But it reminds us that FEMA has a role.

And it is true that conservatives historically believe the best government is the government that is at the closest to the people, right, state and local governments, but FEMA is one of the agencies that Republican governors like a lot, just like Democratic governors.

Every disaster I've ever been to with those presidents, I've seen governors on the ground and both parties really glad that FEMA was there.

They don't want less FEMA.

They want more FEMA.

And maybe it doesn't work all the way they want it to, but they don't want it to go away because FEMA can do things the federal government can do things that states and localities can't.

ASHLEY PARKER: Right.

And, in some ways, FEMA coordinates with their state partners.

On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem spoke in a cabinet meeting where she outlined what she tried to describe as a new sort of FEMA.

Let's take a listen.

KRISTI NOEM, Secretary of Homeland Security: But as soon as you signed the major disaster declaration we were able to get them resources and dollars right away, just like you envisioned through state block grants to help them with cleanup, and FEMA's been deployed.

And we're cutting through the paperwork of the old FEMA, streamlining it, much like your vision of how FEMA should operate, and it's been a much better response to help these families get through this terrible situation.

ASHLEY PARKER: But, Tarini, in some ways, when I hear that, isn't she just describing old FEMA?

TARINI PARTI: She is, and she's actually leaving out what actually happened.

So, based on our reporting, we know that at DHS, there was widespread confusion about how they should respond, how they should move resources in part because of that rule that Zolan mentioned where Kristi Noem has to review any spending over $100,000.

They also didn't pre-position assets close to the impacted area, as they have done in past disasters.

So, they weren't able to quickly move assets and resources in, they didn't have search and rescue teams out until Monday.

This was three days after the flooding had started.

And so there are concerns within the agency about the slowing down effect.

And even if we didn't see the gaps so much in this case because it was a small area, because this wasn't, you know, a major hurricane as we might see in the coming weeks and months, that it didn't show as much.

And also Texas is one of the states that has sort of a more bolstered state emergency response system.

So, other states might not have the types of resources that Texas does.

So, in this case, you know, we might - - we didn't see maybe some of the gaps that Kristi Noem was trying to tout but we might in the future.

ASHLEY PARKER: And Texas has that infrastructure.

It's a big state, it's a red state.

And even with that Texas Governor Greg Abbott almost immediately called in FEMA, right?

So, it makes you wonder how would a smaller state fare, Zolan, or even, or perhaps most especially a blue state.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: Sure.

No, absolutely.

I mean, this is a state -- I did a -- we did a FOIA project, a Freedom of Information Act project, where we got a lot of documents in 2019 and actually compared how FEMA's response was to U.S. territories compared to a place like Texas.

And Texas historically got more support faster than many other places in the United States.

And if they had questions, at this point, you have to, again, wonder how a small community would fare that's going to rely on this federal agency more.

You know, also the president has -- usually disaster response for a president use -- there's some unwritten rules.

The partisanship goes away.

The support is there without strings attached.

But there have been times where if you looked at the president's comments, even from his first term, where you see that transactional approach also through a lens of disaster relief, a sense of this support is coming your way, but also what do you owe me.

Again, first week when he's in office, he goes to California, a place where he had previously threatened no relief for their wildfire response.

And he goes and he says, the federal government will be here for you.

I also want these immigration actions to take place.

I also want this and that.

I want, you know, you to turn over -- I want you to adopt my agenda in a way.

So, you know, will we see that?

We'll have to see.

But, again, to Tarini's point, this is going to keep coming up.

The administration has pushed back on reporters asking questions and interrogating this response.

Well, part of the reason for that is also it's hurricane season, right?

And we're going to see this happen more and more.

ASHLEY PARKER: And, Peter, I want to be careful about not implying causation between the DOGEing of the federal government and the tragedy we saw in Central Texas.

But is -- again, is there a world in which this changes their thinking, or if not, what do these massive cuts sort of throughout the bureaucracy portend for future disasters?

PETER BAKER: I mean, it raise all kinds of questions.

National Weather Service, obviously, National Oceanographic Association Agency -- Atmospheric Agency that predicts climate change patterns and so forth, and whether it had anything to do with this one or not, people will give us a better account of that in the days and weeks to come.

But you can see in the future why that might be something of concern for people because they did know that there were potential flood disaster happening here, and yet despite that, didn't have the preparation, didn't have the warning systems and all that.

And if you have a FEMA that's already one quarter smaller that's right than it was a couple months ago, you know, some cuts may be perfectly good in terms of efficiency of waste, but one quarter is a large chunk out of a federal agency that you want to do more, not less.

ASHLEY PARKER: Right.

And, Tarini, you mentioned some of these gaps that were not as acute because Texas was better prepared, but you've done a lot of reporting on FEMA.

Can you take us through a scenario where these gaps might be more pronounced?

And as much as Kristi Noam did describe a FEMA as it exists, they are trying to make some changes, and can you explain to us what that will actually look like?

TARINI PARTI: Yes.

They're trying to make a lot of changes and staffing in particular has been a big focus.

But this $100,000 review that we keep bringing up over and over again is a big deal because during a major hurricane, we've been told you can spend -- you know, the government spends hundreds of millions of dollars in such a short amount of time.

You can spend a billion within days.

And so getting approval for every little thing that the government spends money on could really, you know, potentially cause lives in this type of situation.

What they've also gotten rid of is door-to-door services, where FEMA staff goes to an impacted area and knocks on doors and tries to help survivors.

So that has been taken away.

We also don't know if they're going to be doing what I described earlier as pre-positioning of these assets, which was something that came out of Hurricane Katrina as sort of a big lesson learned, which is to go big and go quickly and early as much as possible to try to be as prepared.

Even if it costs the government more money, those resources are there in case the state and local officials need them.