President Donald Trump vowed to rebuild communities in North Carolina ravaged by hurricanes last year during the first trip outside Washington of his second term, saying he would ask Congress to provide additional funding for clean-up efforts and pledging to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We’re going to supply the money. Supply a lot of the money,” Trump said Friday after touching down in the state to receive a briefing on the recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene and meet with families affected by the deadly storm.

Trump suggested he might ask the state to help cover some of the recovery costs, “to chip in a little something, like maybe 25% or whatever” but added that “we’re going to get it done as quickly as we can.” Trump said he did not know how much he would ultimately request from lawmakers.

Trump criticized how FEMA had handled the crisis, saying the agency had “really let us down, let the country down” and that it would be less involved in recovery efforts going forward.

At a briefing in Asheville, North Carolina, Trump said he would sign an executive action aimed at overhauling — and potentially eliminating the agency.

“I’ll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think, frankly, FEMA is not good,” Trump said.

Abolishing FEMA would dramatically reshape disaster assistance, which currently includes both grants to state governments and direct payments to disaster survivors and sees the agency deploy staff and resources both immediately after a disaster and over the longer-term recovery.

Trump earlier this week floated turning over disaster assistance to individual states rather than having FEMA respond, a proposal he reiterated on Friday.

“When North Carolina gets hit the governor takes care of it. When Florida gets hit the governor takes care of it, meaning the state takes care of it,” he said.

Trump said he was also tapping Michael Whatley, a North Carolina native who is the chair of the Republican National Committee, to work with North Carolina Governor Josh Stein on recovery efforts. And the president also praised billionaire Elon Musk, who has a role in his administration, for providing help to restore communications through his company SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service.

Trump will travel to California later Friday to see first-hand the devastation caused by wildfires in the Los Angeles area, using his trip to highlight two natural disasters that he cast in his inauguration address as examples of a federal government that could not manage crises at home.

During the presidential campaign, Trump assailed Joe Biden and general election rival Vice President Kamala Harris over the response to North Carolina, promoting unfounded claims that FEMA was not able to help residents because it had spent money on housing undocumented migrants instead of storm victims. Democrats pushed back on his claims, accusing Trump of spreading conspiracy theories and complicating efforts to deliver assistance to those affected.

Congress approved a spending package in December that included $100 billion in disaster relief, including aid for states impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, two powerful storms that tore through parts of the U.S. southeast.

Lawmakers are also facing pressure to move on funding for the wildfires in Los Angeles, which have destroyed roughly 17,000 structures and claimed at least 28 lives. Some Republicans in Congress, though, have called for linking relief funding to new fire-management policies.

Trump has lambasted California Governor Gavin Newsom as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats, over their handling of the fire. The president has made inaccurate claims about the effects of California’s water policy on firefighting abilities.

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