The great political battle over Hurricane Milton didn’t wait for the storm to land
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Tue, October 8, 2024 at 10:00 PM MDT·8 min rea
Long before the outer bands of Hurricane Milton lashed the Florida coast, a political battle over the massive storm was already raging.
A potential natural disaster of such magnitude — this may be the gargantuan climate-change fueled monster that scientists have long feared — ought to be immune from political opportunism.
But in the final weeks of a presidential election featuring a candidate as unrelenting as Donald Trump, nothing escapes partisanship and Milton’s aftermath may prove to be the next opening for the ex-president’s maelstrom of misinformation.
Usually, political shocks caused by hurricanes only unfold when the gale force winds have passed. This time, partly because Trump pushed so hard to exploit last week’s Hurricane Helene for his political gain, the sparring has started early.
For Vice President Kamala Harris, the storm offers a perilous spotlight, which could allow her to show she can master the media moment in a presidential context. It could showcase her capacity to express empathy for victims and her command of the federal government machine. But any failures of the federal rescue and relief effort after the storm is expected to roar ashore on late Wednesday or early Thursday could haunt her before next month’s election. Harris’ test will be complicated by the likelihood that even if the federal effort goes well, Trump is sure to fabricate a story implicating her in failure.
This explains why the Democratic nominee tried to get out in front of Trump, and the storm, by telling reporters on Monday evening that the former president was pushing out misinformation about government aid. “It’s about him, it’s not about you.” The vice president doubled down on Tuesday, telling ABC’s “The View” that “this is not an issue that is about partisanship or politics for certain leaders, but maybe is for others.”
Government officials reinforced the vice president’s message on Tuesday. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell warned on “CNN News Central” that Trump’s rhetoric was putting fear into people that the government wouldn’t help them. And the White House opened an account on Reddit, a social media platform, to identify and combat misinformation.
President Joe Biden may be handling the last major national emergency of his term. A sense of urgency mounted Tuesday morning when he postponed a foreign trip to Germany and Angola. No president can afford to be abroad with a national emergency pending. Biden’s first task is to fulfill his core presidential duty — keeping Americans safe. But with his foreign policy legacy likely to be besmirched by unresolved wars in the Middle East, he surely wants to avoid a domestic imbroglio that would also overshadow his final days in office – and could damage his chosen successor, Harris.
A storm of this size could give Trump a political opening
Trump has repeatedly shown there’s no situation he will not try to leverage for political gain. He seized on Hurricane Helene to bolster his narrative of the Biden-Harris administration as an incompetent rabble, unable to meet the basic needs of the American people. It’s the same way he’s accused Harris of complicity in a national crisis that he claims is marked by crime and rampant immigration and is on a glide path to World War III. Trump’s critique is a caricature. While the country has problems – grocery prices remain stubbornly high and the asylum system is overwhelmed – he’s creating a classic alternative reality for his fans and the conservative media echo chamber.
Trump used the same tactics during the Hurricane Helene drama, falsely accusing Democrats of ignoring Republican areas. The ex-president wrongly said that Biden was ignoring calls from Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. He also claimed, falsely, that Harris had busted the Federal Emergency Management Agency budget to house undocumented migrants and could therefore not help victims of the storm. And Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, misled the country by claiming that the federal government was only offering $750 in aid to citizens who lost their homes. Some of Trump’s claims were debunked by Republican leaders in Georgia and Tennessee. But from Trump’s point of view, it doesn’t matter whether his claims are nonsense. It’s all about making inroads with voters who may not know nuances of the federal relief effort but might take away an unflattering portrayal of Harris.
Trump argues that both Harris and Biden are mentality deficient and not up to the job of president. He’s denied Democratic claims that he’s politicizing hurricane season after rushing to battleground North Carolina to make false claims about the administration’s incompetence. “Anything I do, they’ll say, oh, it’s political,” the ex-president told Laura Ingraham on Fox on Monday. “If I do anything good, no matter what I do, they’ll say, oh, he did it for politics. I mean, they could have gotten there way before me.” Trump’s own haphazard leadership after hurricanes could also come back to haunt him.
The Harris campaign on Monday sought to revive memories of his checkered disaster management record, debuting an ad featuring two former Trump administration officials, Olivia Troye and Kevin Carroll, claiming that the former president once tried to withhold disaster relief funds from Democratic states.
And Harris seized on the approaching storm as a prism to criticize Trump’s character and to push her argument that he’s an “unserious man” who poses a great threat if he’s elected again. On ABC’s “The View” on Tuesday, she accused him of putting himself “before the needs of others.” Harris added: “I fear that he really lacks empathy on a very basic level to care about the suffering of other people and then understand the role of a leader is not to beat people down, it’s to lift people up especially in a time of crisis.”
Still, Trump’s maneuvering is the latest sign of one advantage he holds over Harris despite having a presidential record of his own to defend — as a non-incumbent, he has the luxury of criticizing the administration’s performance while bearing no personal responsibility.
The legacies that shape storm politics
Storm politics are shaped by memories of two disasters. The botched handling of Hurricane Katrina, which slammed New Orleans and the Gulf coast in 2005, helped destroy President George W. Bush’s second term. And President Barack Obama’s more assured management of Superstorm Sandy, a hurricane that hit the East Coast in 2012, helped him put away Republican Mitt Romney in that year’s election. Sandy is mostly remembered for then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s embrace of Obama as he sought maximum federal aid for his state. This angered many Republicans. And Christie was followed during his subsequent GOP presidential campaigns by his decision to put his duty before politics.
One key political player who is unlikely to make the same choice is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who may have future national political ambitions following his failed run for the 2024 Republican nomination. DeSantis faces a similar dilemma to Christie — a need to work seamlessly with a Democratic administration for the good of his state despite his disdain for the president and vice president. And his future political considerations could probably not bear a failed relief effort any more than Harris’ could. Like Harris, DeSantis started playing hurricane politics long before Milton arrived. A White House official told CNN that he had refused her calls about the hurricane — a claim that he denied but that didn’t spare him a rebuke from the vice president.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gets a tour from Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie while talking about the heavy machinery staging area at the Florida Horse Park in Ocala, Florida, on October 8, 2024, before a press conference about the impact that Hurricane Milton will have on the state of Florida. - Doug Engle/Ocala Star-Banner/USA Today Network/ImagnMore
DeSantis set off on a political path that requires dealing with Biden, the lame duck, but doing nothing to boost Harris in a way that could earn the wrath of Trump. “She is being selfish by trying to blunder into this when we’re working just fine,” DeSantis said on Monday evening. “I’ve had storms under both President Trump and President Biden, and I’ve worked well with both of them. She’s the first one who’s trying to politicize the storm, and she’s doing that just because of her campaign. She’s trying to get some type of an edge,” the Florida Republican complained.
Unlike Harris, Biden had kinder words for DeSantis, saying on Tuesday that the governor had been “cooperative.”
“I said no, ‘You’re doing a great job, it’s all being done well, we thank you for it,’” Biden said.
But the president also took out a political insurance policy against any future complaints that the Florida Republican did not get what he wants from the White House. “I literally gave him my personal phone number to call,” Biden said.
CNN.com
Biden pushes back on misinformation ahead of Hurricane Milton
Jordan Connell
Tue, October 8, 2024
WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – President Joe Biden is calling misinformation about how his administration is responding to Hurricane Helene “un-American.”
From the White House on Tuesday, President Biden provided an update on what FEMA is doing to prepare ahead of Hurricane Milton, which is expected to make landfall in Florida this week.
It comes as misinformation continues to spread in communities that were hit the hardest by Helene less than two weeks ago. This includes false claims that the federal government is withholding aid to people in Republican areas.
“Those who do it, do it to try to damage the administration,” Biden said. “But it misleads people, it puts people in circumstances where they’re panicked, where they really, really, really worry.”
Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have questioned FEMA’s response to Hurricane Helene and made false claims that disaster funding is going to migrants or foreign wars.
In a statement from FEMA on Friday, the agency pushed back against rumors that it will only provide $750 to disaster survivors to support their recovery.
The statement said in part, “There are other forms of assistance that you may qualify for to receive, and Serious Needs Assistance is an initial payment you may receive while FEMA assesses your eligibility for additional funds.”
Director of Public Affairs at FEMA, Jaclyn Rothenberg, told Nexstar the agency is not concerned that it won’t have enough money to address both Helene and Milton.
“We have enough funding to be able to support both ongoing Hurricane Helene response and recovery efforts as well as Hurricane Milton response efforts,” Rothenberg said.
President Biden said he has already approved pre-landfall declarations for Florida ahead of Milton.
“Most importantly I have urged everyone, everyone currently located in Hurricane Milton’s path to listen to officials and follow safety instructions,” Biden said. “It’s a matter of life and death and that’s not hyperbole.”
The president also announced he is postponing his trip to Angola and Germany this week because of Hurricane Milton.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Tue, October 8, 2024 at 10:00 PM MDT·8 min rea
Long before the outer bands of Hurricane Milton lashed the Florida coast, a political battle over the massive storm was already raging.
A potential natural disaster of such magnitude — this may be the gargantuan climate-change fueled monster that scientists have long feared — ought to be immune from political opportunism.
But in the final weeks of a presidential election featuring a candidate as unrelenting as Donald Trump, nothing escapes partisanship and Milton’s aftermath may prove to be the next opening for the ex-president’s maelstrom of misinformation.
Usually, political shocks caused by hurricanes only unfold when the gale force winds have passed. This time, partly because Trump pushed so hard to exploit last week’s Hurricane Helene for his political gain, the sparring has started early.
For Vice President Kamala Harris, the storm offers a perilous spotlight, which could allow her to show she can master the media moment in a presidential context. It could showcase her capacity to express empathy for victims and her command of the federal government machine. But any failures of the federal rescue and relief effort after the storm is expected to roar ashore on late Wednesday or early Thursday could haunt her before next month’s election. Harris’ test will be complicated by the likelihood that even if the federal effort goes well, Trump is sure to fabricate a story implicating her in failure.
This explains why the Democratic nominee tried to get out in front of Trump, and the storm, by telling reporters on Monday evening that the former president was pushing out misinformation about government aid. “It’s about him, it’s not about you.” The vice president doubled down on Tuesday, telling ABC’s “The View” that “this is not an issue that is about partisanship or politics for certain leaders, but maybe is for others.”
Government officials reinforced the vice president’s message on Tuesday. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell warned on “CNN News Central” that Trump’s rhetoric was putting fear into people that the government wouldn’t help them. And the White House opened an account on Reddit, a social media platform, to identify and combat misinformation.
President Joe Biden may be handling the last major national emergency of his term. A sense of urgency mounted Tuesday morning when he postponed a foreign trip to Germany and Angola. No president can afford to be abroad with a national emergency pending. Biden’s first task is to fulfill his core presidential duty — keeping Americans safe. But with his foreign policy legacy likely to be besmirched by unresolved wars in the Middle East, he surely wants to avoid a domestic imbroglio that would also overshadow his final days in office – and could damage his chosen successor, Harris.
A storm of this size could give Trump a political opening
Trump has repeatedly shown there’s no situation he will not try to leverage for political gain. He seized on Hurricane Helene to bolster his narrative of the Biden-Harris administration as an incompetent rabble, unable to meet the basic needs of the American people. It’s the same way he’s accused Harris of complicity in a national crisis that he claims is marked by crime and rampant immigration and is on a glide path to World War III. Trump’s critique is a caricature. While the country has problems – grocery prices remain stubbornly high and the asylum system is overwhelmed – he’s creating a classic alternative reality for his fans and the conservative media echo chamber.
Trump used the same tactics during the Hurricane Helene drama, falsely accusing Democrats of ignoring Republican areas. The ex-president wrongly said that Biden was ignoring calls from Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. He also claimed, falsely, that Harris had busted the Federal Emergency Management Agency budget to house undocumented migrants and could therefore not help victims of the storm. And Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, misled the country by claiming that the federal government was only offering $750 in aid to citizens who lost their homes. Some of Trump’s claims were debunked by Republican leaders in Georgia and Tennessee. But from Trump’s point of view, it doesn’t matter whether his claims are nonsense. It’s all about making inroads with voters who may not know nuances of the federal relief effort but might take away an unflattering portrayal of Harris.
Trump argues that both Harris and Biden are mentality deficient and not up to the job of president. He’s denied Democratic claims that he’s politicizing hurricane season after rushing to battleground North Carolina to make false claims about the administration’s incompetence. “Anything I do, they’ll say, oh, it’s political,” the ex-president told Laura Ingraham on Fox on Monday. “If I do anything good, no matter what I do, they’ll say, oh, he did it for politics. I mean, they could have gotten there way before me.” Trump’s own haphazard leadership after hurricanes could also come back to haunt him.
The Harris campaign on Monday sought to revive memories of his checkered disaster management record, debuting an ad featuring two former Trump administration officials, Olivia Troye and Kevin Carroll, claiming that the former president once tried to withhold disaster relief funds from Democratic states.
And Harris seized on the approaching storm as a prism to criticize Trump’s character and to push her argument that he’s an “unserious man” who poses a great threat if he’s elected again. On ABC’s “The View” on Tuesday, she accused him of putting himself “before the needs of others.” Harris added: “I fear that he really lacks empathy on a very basic level to care about the suffering of other people and then understand the role of a leader is not to beat people down, it’s to lift people up especially in a time of crisis.”
Still, Trump’s maneuvering is the latest sign of one advantage he holds over Harris despite having a presidential record of his own to defend — as a non-incumbent, he has the luxury of criticizing the administration’s performance while bearing no personal responsibility.
The legacies that shape storm politics
Storm politics are shaped by memories of two disasters. The botched handling of Hurricane Katrina, which slammed New Orleans and the Gulf coast in 2005, helped destroy President George W. Bush’s second term. And President Barack Obama’s more assured management of Superstorm Sandy, a hurricane that hit the East Coast in 2012, helped him put away Republican Mitt Romney in that year’s election. Sandy is mostly remembered for then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s embrace of Obama as he sought maximum federal aid for his state. This angered many Republicans. And Christie was followed during his subsequent GOP presidential campaigns by his decision to put his duty before politics.
One key political player who is unlikely to make the same choice is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who may have future national political ambitions following his failed run for the 2024 Republican nomination. DeSantis faces a similar dilemma to Christie — a need to work seamlessly with a Democratic administration for the good of his state despite his disdain for the president and vice president. And his future political considerations could probably not bear a failed relief effort any more than Harris’ could. Like Harris, DeSantis started playing hurricane politics long before Milton arrived. A White House official told CNN that he had refused her calls about the hurricane — a claim that he denied but that didn’t spare him a rebuke from the vice president.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gets a tour from Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie while talking about the heavy machinery staging area at the Florida Horse Park in Ocala, Florida, on October 8, 2024, before a press conference about the impact that Hurricane Milton will have on the state of Florida. - Doug Engle/Ocala Star-Banner/USA Today Network/ImagnMore
DeSantis set off on a political path that requires dealing with Biden, the lame duck, but doing nothing to boost Harris in a way that could earn the wrath of Trump. “She is being selfish by trying to blunder into this when we’re working just fine,” DeSantis said on Monday evening. “I’ve had storms under both President Trump and President Biden, and I’ve worked well with both of them. She’s the first one who’s trying to politicize the storm, and she’s doing that just because of her campaign. She’s trying to get some type of an edge,” the Florida Republican complained.
Unlike Harris, Biden had kinder words for DeSantis, saying on Tuesday that the governor had been “cooperative.”
“I said no, ‘You’re doing a great job, it’s all being done well, we thank you for it,’” Biden said.
But the president also took out a political insurance policy against any future complaints that the Florida Republican did not get what he wants from the White House. “I literally gave him my personal phone number to call,” Biden said.
CNN.com
Biden pushes back on misinformation ahead of Hurricane Milton
Jordan Connell
Tue, October 8, 2024
WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – President Joe Biden is calling misinformation about how his administration is responding to Hurricane Helene “un-American.”
From the White House on Tuesday, President Biden provided an update on what FEMA is doing to prepare ahead of Hurricane Milton, which is expected to make landfall in Florida this week.
It comes as misinformation continues to spread in communities that were hit the hardest by Helene less than two weeks ago. This includes false claims that the federal government is withholding aid to people in Republican areas.
“Those who do it, do it to try to damage the administration,” Biden said. “But it misleads people, it puts people in circumstances where they’re panicked, where they really, really, really worry.”
Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have questioned FEMA’s response to Hurricane Helene and made false claims that disaster funding is going to migrants or foreign wars.
In a statement from FEMA on Friday, the agency pushed back against rumors that it will only provide $750 to disaster survivors to support their recovery.
The statement said in part, “There are other forms of assistance that you may qualify for to receive, and Serious Needs Assistance is an initial payment you may receive while FEMA assesses your eligibility for additional funds.”
Director of Public Affairs at FEMA, Jaclyn Rothenberg, told Nexstar the agency is not concerned that it won’t have enough money to address both Helene and Milton.
“We have enough funding to be able to support both ongoing Hurricane Helene response and recovery efforts as well as Hurricane Milton response efforts,” Rothenberg said.
President Biden said he has already approved pre-landfall declarations for Florida ahead of Milton.
“Most importantly I have urged everyone, everyone currently located in Hurricane Milton’s path to listen to officials and follow safety instructions,” Biden said. “It’s a matter of life and death and that’s not hyperbole.”
The president also announced he is postponing his trip to Angola and Germany this week because of Hurricane Milton.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
“I’m sick and tired of this crap": Officials debunk Trump's "truly dangerous" Hurricane Helene lies
Charles R. Davis
SALON
Mon, October 7, 2024
Donald Trump; Brian Kemp Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed lies about immigrants since at least 2015, so when a hurricane devastated large swathes of the southeast last month, killing over 200 people, he predictably sought to blame the disaster on Democrats and undocumented immigrants.
At first, what CNN described as the Republican candidate’s “barrage of lies and distortions” centered on claims that President Joe Biden was denying aid to red states, refusing to even take their calls.
“He’s been calling the president, hasn’t been able to get him,” Trump said last week, referring to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who soon clarified that Biden had, in fact, called him.
“He offered that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly,” Kemp said, adding that he’s had a “great relationship” with FEMA, which has deployed nearly 7,000 personnel and provided upwards of $137 million in assistance to survivors of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene.
Trump, fact-checked but not dissuaded, would go on to refine his lie, pivoting from claimed “reports” that deep-red portions of the south were being denied aid to claiming no would be getting any assistance because the money was all gone — spent, as it turns out, “on housing for illegal migrants.”
“They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank,” the 78-year-old told his followers.
Here Trump was referring to a program, authorized by Congress, that does indeed provide grants to help local governments and aid agencies provide housing for people seeking asylum. As The Washington Post noted, that program is administered by FEMA but not with money for disaster relief: the Republican-led House of Representatives authorized an entirely separate pool of money.
The only reported case of money being pulled from FEMA to cover the costs of housing and detaining immigrants? It occurred in 2019, when Trump was president and his administration yanked a total of $271 million from the Department of Homeland Security, including $155 million from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, to address a surge in asylum applications.
So when Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., a member of the Republican House leadership, claimed last week on Facebook that Democrats “drained FEMA to give handouts to illegal immigrants including dangerous criminals,” she knew that she was referring to a program authorized by the Republican-led chamber in which she presides. When she added that “there isn’t enough left for the Americans left devastated by Hurricane Helene,” Stefanik — silent in 2019; present for votes authorizing the program in 2023 and 2024 — likewise knew she was lying to spread fear and sow division.
The cynical and wrong response to this deluge of stuff-we-made-up is to claim that such dishonesty is the norm, the world of politics being the refuge of scoundrels. But that’s low-info nihilism masquerading as sophistication. Trump’s GOP has embraced lying, shamelessly, to the point that the conscious lie is now a point of pride.
When Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, admitted that he was telling made-up slanders of Haitian immigrants, he did so without apology, boasting that he is willing to “create stories” to get at a purportedly deeper truth (immigrants: bad). As with the Republican Party’s dump-truck of falsehoods about election fraud, the fact that people believe shameless lies from cynical liars is then cited as reason to keep the discussion going: people believe things that are simply not true and now we, as public officials, must validate their concerns.
Fact-checks are just another manifestation of liberals being triggered, while a willingness to spread conspiracy theories that one doesn’t even believe shows commitment to the MAGA cause and the underlying truth that the cause is good and just. Out in the real world, though — off Facebook, away from Fox News and far removed from X — these lies have real consequences.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Aaron Ellenburg, sheriff of Rutherford County, North Carolina, told The New York Times, referring to claims spread by Trump ally Laura Loomer, a self-styled white nationalist who openly celebrates the killing of migrants, about FEMA supposedly taking hurricane-damaged property from Republicans and giving it to elite business interests looking to mine it for lithium. Ellenburg said he’s had to spend days debunking the misinformation, which continues to be spread by elected Republicans (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., recently suggested that a shadowy “they” used a top-secret weather machine to create a Category 4 storm). “I’m sick and tired of this crap.”
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
FEMA now has a regularly updated section on its website debunking viral claims spread by Trump and associates, including the assertion that it’s now “in the process of confiscating Helene survivor property.”
Speaking Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell described the Trump-Vance disinformation campaign as “frankly ridiculous” but also “truly dangerous.” Thousands of federal employees working to provide aid to hurricane survivors are being smeared as part of an elite plot to displace red-blooded Americans with foreigners and lithium mines.
Part of the danger is that Republicans, either actively spreading the lies or answering to a base that believes them, may be unwilling to provide aid for hurricane victims going forward. If FEMA is merely a tool for Democrats to replace white Americans with non-white immigrants, why should we give it any more money?
Dozens of GOP lawmakers voted against the last FEMA appropriations bill. Now House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., isn’t so sure he’ll hold such a vote again anytime soon, despite the Biden administration warning that the huge toll from Helene could make FEMA run out of money before hurricane season is over. Johnson, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” said he’ll wait until after the election before considering any such request.
“The thing about these hurricanes and disasters of this magnitude is it takes a while to calculate the actual damages, and the states are going to need some time to do that,” he said.
According to Republican leaders, then, FEMA is running out of money for real, GOP-voting Americans — but we will have to wait and see if Trump wins in November before we appropriate any more. In the meantime, the party will continue to lie, with Trump again claiming Monday on his website, Truth Social, that “almost all of the FEMA money” had gone “to Illegal Migrants.”
Neither conspiracy theories nor politicians lying is a new thing in America, but it would be a mistake to conclude that nothing has changed since 2016, when one of the two major political parties was taken over by a man that who took fringe falsehoods and made them his entire platform.
As Mekela Panditharatne, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Business Insider: "It's not necessarily unusual for emergency situations to be breeding grounds for mis- and disinformation.” What is new, however, is the extent of it — party leaders sharing lies on platforms run by fascism-curious billionaires — and, she said, “I don't think it's a coincidence that it's so close to a very consequential national election."
Fact check: Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response
Mon, October 7, 2024
Donald Trump; Brian Kemp Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed lies about immigrants since at least 2015, so when a hurricane devastated large swathes of the southeast last month, killing over 200 people, he predictably sought to blame the disaster on Democrats and undocumented immigrants.
At first, what CNN described as the Republican candidate’s “barrage of lies and distortions” centered on claims that President Joe Biden was denying aid to red states, refusing to even take their calls.
“He’s been calling the president, hasn’t been able to get him,” Trump said last week, referring to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who soon clarified that Biden had, in fact, called him.
“He offered that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly,” Kemp said, adding that he’s had a “great relationship” with FEMA, which has deployed nearly 7,000 personnel and provided upwards of $137 million in assistance to survivors of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene.
Trump, fact-checked but not dissuaded, would go on to refine his lie, pivoting from claimed “reports” that deep-red portions of the south were being denied aid to claiming no would be getting any assistance because the money was all gone — spent, as it turns out, “on housing for illegal migrants.”
“They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank,” the 78-year-old told his followers.
Here Trump was referring to a program, authorized by Congress, that does indeed provide grants to help local governments and aid agencies provide housing for people seeking asylum. As The Washington Post noted, that program is administered by FEMA but not with money for disaster relief: the Republican-led House of Representatives authorized an entirely separate pool of money.
The only reported case of money being pulled from FEMA to cover the costs of housing and detaining immigrants? It occurred in 2019, when Trump was president and his administration yanked a total of $271 million from the Department of Homeland Security, including $155 million from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, to address a surge in asylum applications.
So when Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., a member of the Republican House leadership, claimed last week on Facebook that Democrats “drained FEMA to give handouts to illegal immigrants including dangerous criminals,” she knew that she was referring to a program authorized by the Republican-led chamber in which she presides. When she added that “there isn’t enough left for the Americans left devastated by Hurricane Helene,” Stefanik — silent in 2019; present for votes authorizing the program in 2023 and 2024 — likewise knew she was lying to spread fear and sow division.
The cynical and wrong response to this deluge of stuff-we-made-up is to claim that such dishonesty is the norm, the world of politics being the refuge of scoundrels. But that’s low-info nihilism masquerading as sophistication. Trump’s GOP has embraced lying, shamelessly, to the point that the conscious lie is now a point of pride.
When Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, admitted that he was telling made-up slanders of Haitian immigrants, he did so without apology, boasting that he is willing to “create stories” to get at a purportedly deeper truth (immigrants: bad). As with the Republican Party’s dump-truck of falsehoods about election fraud, the fact that people believe shameless lies from cynical liars is then cited as reason to keep the discussion going: people believe things that are simply not true and now we, as public officials, must validate their concerns.
Fact-checks are just another manifestation of liberals being triggered, while a willingness to spread conspiracy theories that one doesn’t even believe shows commitment to the MAGA cause and the underlying truth that the cause is good and just. Out in the real world, though — off Facebook, away from Fox News and far removed from X — these lies have real consequences.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Aaron Ellenburg, sheriff of Rutherford County, North Carolina, told The New York Times, referring to claims spread by Trump ally Laura Loomer, a self-styled white nationalist who openly celebrates the killing of migrants, about FEMA supposedly taking hurricane-damaged property from Republicans and giving it to elite business interests looking to mine it for lithium. Ellenburg said he’s had to spend days debunking the misinformation, which continues to be spread by elected Republicans (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., recently suggested that a shadowy “they” used a top-secret weather machine to create a Category 4 storm). “I’m sick and tired of this crap.”
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
FEMA now has a regularly updated section on its website debunking viral claims spread by Trump and associates, including the assertion that it’s now “in the process of confiscating Helene survivor property.”
Speaking Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell described the Trump-Vance disinformation campaign as “frankly ridiculous” but also “truly dangerous.” Thousands of federal employees working to provide aid to hurricane survivors are being smeared as part of an elite plot to displace red-blooded Americans with foreigners and lithium mines.
Part of the danger is that Republicans, either actively spreading the lies or answering to a base that believes them, may be unwilling to provide aid for hurricane victims going forward. If FEMA is merely a tool for Democrats to replace white Americans with non-white immigrants, why should we give it any more money?
Dozens of GOP lawmakers voted against the last FEMA appropriations bill. Now House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., isn’t so sure he’ll hold such a vote again anytime soon, despite the Biden administration warning that the huge toll from Helene could make FEMA run out of money before hurricane season is over. Johnson, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” said he’ll wait until after the election before considering any such request.
“The thing about these hurricanes and disasters of this magnitude is it takes a while to calculate the actual damages, and the states are going to need some time to do that,” he said.
According to Republican leaders, then, FEMA is running out of money for real, GOP-voting Americans — but we will have to wait and see if Trump wins in November before we appropriate any more. In the meantime, the party will continue to lie, with Trump again claiming Monday on his website, Truth Social, that “almost all of the FEMA money” had gone “to Illegal Migrants.”
Neither conspiracy theories nor politicians lying is a new thing in America, but it would be a mistake to conclude that nothing has changed since 2016, when one of the two major political parties was taken over by a man that who took fringe falsehoods and made them his entire platform.
As Mekela Panditharatne, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Business Insider: "It's not necessarily unusual for emergency situations to be breeding grounds for mis- and disinformation.” What is new, however, is the extent of it — party leaders sharing lies on platforms run by fascism-curious billionaires — and, she said, “I don't think it's a coincidence that it's so close to a very consequential national election."
Fact check: Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response
Daniel Dale, CNN
Mon, October 7, 2024
Former President Donald Trump has delivered a barrage of lies and distortions about the federal response to Hurricane Helene.
While various misinformation about the response has spread widely without Trump’s involvement, the Republican presidential nominee has been one of the country’s leading deceivers on the subject. Over a span of six days, in public comments and social media posts, Trump has used his powerful megaphone to endorse or invent false or unsubstantiated claims.
The chief targets of his hurricane-related dishonesty have been Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in the November presidential election, and President Joe Biden.
Monday: Trump falsely claims Biden hasn’t answered calls from Georgia’s governor
During a visit to Georgia on Monday, Trump said of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp: “He’s been calling the president, hasn’t been able to get him.”
It was immediately clear that Trump’s claim was false. Kemp, a Republican, told reporters earlier Monday that he had spoken with Biden the day prior — and that it was Kemp who had initially missed a call from Biden, not the other way around.
Kemp told reporters that he had successfully called Biden right back. Kemp added: “He just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’ And I told him, you know, ‘We got what we need. We’ll work through the federal process.’ He offered that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly, which — I appreciate that. But we’ve had FEMA embedded with us since a day or two before the storm hit in our state operations center in Atlanta; we’ve got a great relationship with them.”
Monday: Trump cites baseless ‘reports’ about anti-Republican bias in the North Carolina response
In a social media post on Monday, Trump said of North Carolina: “I’ll be there shortly, but don’t like the reports that I’m getting about the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of the State, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.”
It’s unclear what “reports” Trump might have been getting, but there was no apparent basis for the underlying claim that the Biden administration and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper were maliciously abandoning certain communities out of partisan bias.
Trump provided no evidence when a reporter pressed him later in the day.
Thursday: Trump falsely claims the Biden-Harris response had received ‘universally’ negative reviews
Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday that Biden and Harris “are universally being given POOR GRADES for the way that they are handling the Hurricane, especially in North Carolina.”
That wasn’t even close to accurate. Though the Biden administration’s response had certainly received criticism, it had also been praised by various state and local leaders — including the Republican governors of some of the affected states and the Democratic governor of North Carolina, plus local leaders including the Democratic mayor of the hard-hit North Carolina city of Asheville.
For example, Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said at a Tuesday press conference that federal assistance had “been superb,” noting that Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had both called and told him to let them know whatever the state needed. McMaster also said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell had called.
Thursday: Trump falsely claims Harris spent ‘all her FEMA money’ on housing illegal migrants
At a campaign rally in Michigan on Thursday, Trump claimed that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants, many of whom should not be in our country.” He added in an election-related conspiracy theory, saying, “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”
This is false.
First, there is zero basis for Trump’s suggestion that the Biden administration is running some sort of scheme to get undocumented immigrants to vote illegally in the 2024 election. Voting by noncitizens is a felony.
Second, there is zero basis for claiming that FEMA disaster assistance money was stolen — by anyone, let alone Harris personally — for the housing of migrants.
Congress appropriated $650 million in the 2024 fiscal year to fund a program that helps state and local governments house migrants — and instructed US Customs and Border Protection to transfer that $650 million to FEMA to administer the program. But this $650 million pot is entirely distinct from FEMA’s pot of disaster relief funds; as the Department of Homeland Security, the White House and independent observers noted this week, they’re just two separate things funded separately by Congress.
Congress appropriated more than $35 billion in disaster relief funds for fiscal 2024, according to official FEMA statistics.
Friday: Trump falsely claims $1 billion was ‘stolen’ from FEMA for migrants and has gone ‘missing’
Though Trump’s Thursday claim about FEMA money and migrants had already been debunked by Friday, Trump repeated the claim to reporters at least twice on Friday — and then said it again at a Friday night town hall event in North Carolina.
Saturday: Trump falsely claims the federal government is only giving $750 to people who lost their homes
At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump strongly suggested that Americans who lost their homes in the hurricane were only being offered $750 in federal aid.
“They’re offering them $750, to people whose homes have been washed away. And yet we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of. They’re offering them $750. They’ve been destroyed, these people have been destroyed,” Trump said. He added, “Think of it: We give foreign countries hundreds of billions of dollars and we’re handing North Carolina $750.”
Trump’s claim is wrong. As FEMA explained earlier in the week on social media and on a web page it created to combat misinformation about the response, $750 is merely the immediate, upfront aid survivors can get to cover basic, pressing needs like food, water, baby formula and emergency supplies. Survivors are also eligible to apply for additional forms of assistance, such as to pay for temporary housing and home repairs, that can be worth thousands of dollars; the current maximum amount for home repair assistance, for example, is $42,500.
During Harris’ visit to Georgia on Wednesday, she said, “And the federal relief and assistance that we have been providing has included FEMA providing $750 for folks who need immediate needs being met, such as food, baby formula, and the like. And you can apply now.” But she added just moments later, “FEMA is also providing tens of thousands more dollars for folks to help them be able to deal with home repair, to be able to cover a deductible when and if they have insurance, and also hotel costs.”
It’s also worth noting that this hurricane-related assistance to individual residents is separate from the hurricane-related assistance the federal government will provide to state governments. For example, the federal transportation department announced Saturday that it was immediately providing $100 million to North Carolina’s transportation department “to help pay for the costs of immediate emergency work resulting from Hurricane Helene flood damage.” Buttigieg added that this emergency funding “will be followed by additional federal resources.”
Saturday: Trump falsely claims there are ‘no helicopters, no rescue’ in North Carolina
Trump, criticizing Harris for participating in a political fundraising event in California the last weekend of September, said at the Saturday rally in Pennsylvania: “Kamala wined and dined in San Francisco, and all of the people in North Carolina — no helicopters, no rescue — it’s just — what’s happened there is very bad.”
This claim about North Carolina is false. There have been numerous government and private helicopters and other aircraft involved in rescue and aid efforts in North Carolina, though some residents died before they could be rescued and a significant number of residents have remained missing or stranded for days.
The North Carolina National Guard announced Thursday that its own air assets had “completed 146 flight missions, resulting in the rescue of 538 people and 150 pets.” The Washington Post reported Friday: “The drone of helicopters has become routine across western North Carolina in the wake of Helene. National Guard and civilian aircraft now crisscross the skies of a region where roads and bridges have been destroyed and people are trapped. The helicopters are delivering supplies, picking up people who need rescuing, dropping off firefighters and search-and-rescue crews and radioing for assistance for others who can be more easily accessed from the ground.“
CNN reported Saturday that air traffic over western North Carolina had increased 300% over the past seven days due to hurricane relief efforts, according to Becca Gallas, director of North Carolina’s Division of Aviation. The state said in an official update Saturday: “A total of 53 search and rescue teams from North Carolina and beyond, consisting of more than 1,600 personnel have conducted search and rescue operations during this event. Search and rescue teams have interacted with over 5,400 people, including assists, evacuations and rescues.”
‘The View’ Torches Trump’s Lies About FEMA Aid for Hurricane Helene: ‘One of the Most Evil Things He’s Ever Done’
Andi Ortiz
Mon, October 7, 2024
Despite it being untrue, Donald Trump continues to accuse President Biden and Vice President Harris of misappropriating FEMA aid money meant for Hurricane Helene recovery — and the hosts of “The View” have just about had it.
According to Trump, the Biden administration is actually using relief funds to “give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.” FEMA administrators have declared the accusation “ridiculous and just plain false,” and even Republican officials in North Carolina have debunked it.
So, to kick off Monday’s episode of the ABC talk show, the women shredded the presidential hopeful, reminding audiences that he handled disaster relief in Puerto Rico by tossing rolls of paper towels into crowds.
“Why people would want to put that out there to people who are suffering — people have lost their homes, towns are gone. Why would you get out there and tell them there’s no help for them?” moderator Whoopi Goldberg asked.
Co-host Sunny Hostin had a quick answer to that, though.
“The Trump administration, I think, of course we all know, thrives on despair,” she said. “And it thrives on fear and making people fear that, but for Trump, they’re in real trouble. But he also is known for projecting and what I learned was, while he’s falsely accusing the Biden administration of redirecting these funds, that’s exactly what he did.“
The hosts also pointed out that, as a result of Trump’s lies, FEMA is seeing less volunteers come out to help. But for host Sara Haines, Hostin’s point about projecting is especially important, particularly in regards to future disasters, should he get elected again.
“He’s telecasting not only what he has done, but what he would do in this same situation, when people are down and out,” she said. “It is the most evil thing — one of the most evil things he’s ever done.”
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