Ammon News - President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. was going to help with the response to Southeast Asia’s deadly earthquake.

But the effects of his administration’s deep cuts in foreign assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department will likely be tested in any response to the first big natural disaster of his second term.

Sarah Charles, a former senior USAID official who oversaw disaster-response teams and overall humanitarian work under the Biden administration, said the system was now “in shambles,” without the people or resources to move quickly to pull out survivors from collapsed buildings and otherwise save lives.

A powerful quake shook Myanmar and neighboring Thailand on Friday, killing at least 150 people and burying others under the rubble of high-rises.

Asked about the quake by reporters in Washington, Trump said: “We’re going to be helping. We’ve already alerted the people. Yeah, it’s terrible what happened.” AP