Former President Donald Trump has been accused of spreading falsehoods about the federal response to Hurricane Helene to benefit himself politically.
Trump and a number of his Republican allies have been pushing unsubstantiated claims this week concerning the response of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to Helene, which left over 200 people dead and dealt massive damage to infrastructure when it ripped through the Southeast last week.
The ex-president falsely claimed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was diverting disaster relief money to illegal migrants and made an evidence-free assertion that the Biden administration was denying relief to “Republican areas.”
Trump also falsely claimed that Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, with whom he held a joint news conference concerning disaster relief efforts on Friday, was unable to speak with Biden about federal disaster assistance over the phone.
Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia who has endorsed Harris in this year’s election, said during a CNN broadcast on Friday night that Trump’s false hurricane claims acted as solemn evidence pertaining to the state of his party.
“It’s a sobering reminder of where the Republican Party is at right now, and how deep in the gutter we truly are,” Duncan told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “To think that we’re going to use this platform to politicize … one of the worst storms to hit this region ever.”
“Donald Trump is down in Georgia today only because he cares about trying to win Georgia,” he added. “Because he’s realized that if he loses Georgia, he’s probably going to end up going to jail.”
The cable news network’s chief media analyst Brian Stelter then blasted Trump, accusing him of telling Americans “not to believe your eyes or your ears” and of spreading “lies” for “brazen political purposes.”
“It’s about saying, ‘Biden and Harris are incompetent, don’t trust them, they hate America,’” said Stelter. “That’s the message from Republicans, it’s so extreme though … The problem with the hurricane is that the people who are being lied to now about Helene, they’re actually going to suffer as a result.”
“There are rescue workers, according to Huffington Post, that are being sent out to homes because of memes and then finding there’s nobody there because the meme is a lie,” he continued. “So, there’s actual real world harm that’s being caused in these cases.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump’s office via email on Friday night.
Trump said during a rally in Michigan on Thursday that Harris, who has no direct control over FEMA or any other federal agencies, had spent “all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants.”
In reality, some FEMA money has been spent to house migrants but the funds are part of a program that is entirely separate and unrelated to the FEMA disaster fund, which the agency says is fully funded to deal with the current crisis.
As Helene approached the U.S. last week, Congress passed an additional $20 billion in FEMA disaster relief funding. The only lawmakers to vote against the funding were Republicans.
While the Biden administration has not diverted any FEMA money to migrants, Trump himself faced criticism for diverting FEMA funds to detain migrants while he was president.
Trump was also denounced over his response to Hurricane Maria’s devastating impact on Puerto Rico in 2017, including blocking relief funds to the U.S. territory.
In a Truth Social post this week, Trump claimed that the federal government and Democratic state officials were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” in the aftermath of Helene.
There does not appear to be any credible evidence to support Trump’s claim, with Republican governors in affected states having instead thanked the government for a prompt disaster response.
Trump on Monday said that Kemp was “having a hard time getting the president on the phone,” with the former president adding that the federal government was “not being responsive” regarding the disaster.
The Georgia governor had directly contradicted Trump hours earlier, saying that he had spoken with Biden over the phone on Sunday, when the president pledged disaster assistance and told Kemp that he could “call him directly” for any additional help.
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