Abbott Failed to Call Out McCraw or Mayor
for Finger Pointing after School Shooting
Capitol Inside
July 11, 2025
President Donald Trump and Governor Greg Abbott attemped to shoot the messengers when they tried to duck questions they were afraid to answer honestly this week on governmental remiss that set the stage for the worst Texas flooding disaster in more than a century.
Abbott dodged the toughest question that he faced at a press conference on Wednesday when he insinuated that the CNN reporter who posed it was a loser. Trump took a cue from the governor on Friday in Kerrville when he degraded a CBS reporter as bad and evil for asking him what he would say to Texans who believe that more could have been done to prevent the loss of lives during the flood on the Fourth of July. The president refused to answer the question that prompted to insults.
But Abbott's characterization of the blame game in the aftermath of the flood as the "language of losers" represents a dramatic double-standard from the positions he embraced in the wake of a record freeze in Texas in 2021 and an elementary school massacre in Uvalde a year later.
The Republican governor was the first to point the finger after the Texas power grid melted down during Winter Storm Uri when hundreds of people froze to death including countless victims whose bodies were never recovered. Abbott moved with lightning speed to blame wind and solar energy for the winter catastrophe in an apparent atfempt to mask the natural gas industry's culpability.
If the governor is right about pointing fingers as a lingo that winners don't speak, a pair of Abbott allies were conducting a symphony for losers in the voltaic aftermath of the Uvalde killings at the hand of a teenage gunman in the spring of 2022. But Abbott remained mum when now-retired Department of Public Safety director Steve McCraw got the blame game under way without delay with a successful attempt to make the local school district chief the scapegoat for the worst performance by law enforcement in Texas in modern times.
The governor raised no objections when current rookie Republican State Rep. Don McLaughlin pinned the blame a month later on McCraw and the state police for the historic inaction in his role at the time as the Uvalde mayor. Abbott declined to portray either McLaughlin or McCraw as losers like reporters for having the audacity to ask what went wrong and why last week in an area with a history of deadly flooding that had no warning from local or state authorities or attempts to evacuate.
Abbott refused to call out the state police for the Uvalde disaster when 18 children and a teacher were slain in an attack that left 18 children and a teacher dead in its wake. McCraw stepped down late last amid accolades and praise for his long service to the state. But the veteran lawman never faced any significant accountability for his agency's showing in Uvalde where he insisted it hadn't failed despite McLaughlin's accusations.
Instead of slamming McLaughlin as a loser, Abbott endorsed him for the Texas House in 2024 and contributed more than $200,000 to his winning campaign that year.
With a package of flood-releated bills at the top of the governor's agenda for a special session that convenes nine days from now, the Texas Capitol will be flooded with losers if lawmakers expect to find viable solutions that would require them to get to the bottom of a growing list of ways that the state and local governments failed to protect the people who died in the flood on Independence Day.
Texas legislators will have to gut it up and face the truth on what authorities could have done proactively to prevent the catastrophe or to minimize the loss of life flood. The Legislature will be operating under the searing glare of a microscope that will make it hard if not impossible to hide when its members tackle issues inspired by the flooding with a death toll that could surpass 300 before the summer session convenes July 21.
Texans can expect no more than band-aids and window dressing if their elected representatives and senators are speaking the language of cowards who are too thin-skinned to face the truth about the remiss, complacency, lack of vision and penny-pinching at every level of government in the hours, months and years before the storm.
Lawmakers could prepare for the painful process they're about to begin by reviewing the news stories that are linked below.
STATE
Texas Repeatedly Rejected Funding
TDEM Denied Flood Alarm Funding
Texas Officials Give Few Details
Texas Lawmakers Face Scrutiny
FEDERAL
Trump Backs Off FEMA Abolishment
Trump Tries to Avoid Flood Criticism
DHS Budget Limits Delayed Response
FEMA Missed Camp Mystic Flood Risks
FEMA Leader is No Show at Texas Floods
White House Says FEMA Has Funds
LOCAL
County Warned of Flood 8 Years Ago
County Avoids Questions on Timeline
Was Emergency Alert Worker Awake?
County Flagged Need for Flood Alarm
Internal County Report Predicted Flood
Sheriff Under Fire on Flood Warnings
Officials Yet to Explain Who Did What
Mike Hailey is the editor, publisher and founder of Capitol Inside. His column Hailey's Comment appears on the web site on a semi-regular basis.
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