What did Donald Trump do today?

He said the families of flood victims were "evil" if they questioned whether anything could have been done to prevent their deaths.

The death toll from the flooding of the Guadalupe River last week in Texas has risen to 121, and that number is likely to reach almost 300 with at least 173 people still listed as missing. 

Today, Trump toured some of the damage, and had this exchange with a local reporter:

REPORTER: Several of the families we've heard from are obviously upset because they say that those warnings, those alerts didn't go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved. What do you say to those families?

TRUMP: Well, I think everyone did an incredible job, under the circumstances, this was, I guess [Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi [Noem] said a one-in-500, one-in-a-thousand-years, and, uh, I just have admiration for the job that everybody did. Uh, there's this admiration, uh, the, uh—only a—bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you, I don't know who you are, but only a very, uh, evil person would ask a question like that, I think this has been—heroism, I think this has been incredible, really, the job you've all done, it's easy to sit back and say "Oh, what could have happened here, there, you know." Maybe we could have done something differently. This was a, a thing that says, uh, [unintelligible] says never happened before.

 Among the question that many "evil" residents and survivors of the flood have been asking are:

• Why was an emergency alert not issued immediately after local first responders specifically asked for one?  

• Why did local officials not act on an urgent flood warning for over three hours?
  
  
• How much did Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's insistence on personally approving all expenses over $100,000—virtually nothing in the case of an emergency like this—delay relief and rescue efforts?
  
  
• Why has the director of FEMA been completely absent, before and during the crisis?
  
  
• Why did Texas state officials deny requests and funds to build a siren warning system for the area known as "Flash Flood Alley," even though everyone was aware of the dangers due to deadly floods in the recent past?
  
  
• Why did Trump wait until two days after the floods to declare a disaster, which would have made more rescue and relief resources available if it had come sooner?
  
  
• Why does Trump say FEMA is unnecessary and should be phased out if he thinks it was so helpful here, and is that still his plan?
  
  
• How much did the massive staff cuts at regional National Weather Service offices impact the accuracy and timeliness of the forecast, and how well it was communicated to local officials?
  
  
• Why were there not enough resources at FEMA to pay for more than one day of the call centers that are normally contracted to deal with disaster relief inquiries?
  
  
• Why does Trump always describe each new flood, hurricane, tornado, wildfire, or other climate-related disaster as some completely unpredictable thing that "nobody's ever seen before," instead of working to prevent or prepare for them?

Trump immediately switched to questions from friendly partisan media, but did not address any of the questions above. He did, however, use some of his time at the disaster relief press conference to complain that people were still upset with him about the price of eggs.

Why does this matter?

• There are more important things here than Donald Trump's political exposure.  

• Americans have a right to ask critical questions of their government. 

• Only cults and dictatorships call people who question the leader "evil."