Trump's Hurricane Of Helene Lies Highlights His Unfitness For Office
Donald Trump is once again weaponizing disinformation to exploit a crisis for political gain. Some of the very things he shamelessly accuses the Biden-Harris Administration of doing, he did himself.
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Hurricane Helene is now the deadliest hurricane since Katrina in 2005. In the wake of its devastation, the death toll has continued to rise, now reaching over 200 people as of this weekend.
Moments of life-threatening crisis like this are when people need accurate information the most. It’s in these moments when we expect our leaders to show up as their best selves. Americans deserve that. We’ve been seeing many leaders in both parties, at the local and federal level, rise to the occasion, but when it comes to Donald Trump, we see his usual worst self as he once again deceptively seeks to exploit a disaster for personal political gain.
Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Elon Musk, and countless right-wing grifters on Twitter have been spreading blatant lies about the Biden-Harris Administration’s response to Hurricane Helene. AI images alleging to be of Helene’s aftermath have also garnered millions of views on social media. This is a blatant disinformation campaign seeking to erode Kamala Harris’s candidacy and boost Donald Trump.
Local lawmakers have been outright begging for the disinformation to stop. The lies have become so overwhelming that FEMA created a “Hurricane Helene: Rumor Response” section of their website specifically designed to debunk false claims about their hurricane response.
Before we get to these lies, it’s important that we affirm the truth up front.
There has been bipartisan praise of the federal and state-level responses. In North Carolina, which has been particularly hardest hit, top leaders from both parties are working hard to provide relief to their constituents.
North Carolina’s Democratic Governor, Roy Cooper, praised the federal response in a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday, stating: “This has been a massive, unprecedented response. We are deeply grateful for the federal resources that we have. FEMA has been on the ground with us since the very beginning.”
Governor Cooper later blasted those who are spreading lies. In a not-so-subtle attack on Trump and Musk, Cooper posted on Twitter: “We need to work together to rebuild and recover from a catastrophic disaster like this one - and spreading false information to sow chaos hurts real people. Politicians, billionaires and grifters who peddle lies during a time of crisis should be held accountable.”
In a separate event on Friday, Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina hit similar notes as Governor Cooper and condemned the critics as clueless: “I’ve lived in North Carolina for almost 30 years. I’ve seen a lot of storms come through this state. I’m actually impressed with how much attention was paid to a region that wasn’t likely to have experienced the impact that they did… For anybody who thinks that any level of government, anybody here, could have been prepared precisely for what we’re dealing with here, clearly, are clueless. They’re doing a great job.”
I lasered in on North Carolina here because that is where the bulk of the right-wing lies are targeting. There have been challenges, no doubt, but what Trump and his allies are claiming has absolutely no basis in reality. In fact, some of the lies Trump is directing at the Biden-Harris Administration are actually things Trump did while president.
Let’s debunk Donald Trump's Hurricane Helene lies, establish how many of them are simply Trump projecting his behavior onto others, and why Trump’s habit of lying about crises for political gain definitively demonstrates his unfitness for office.
Debunking Trump’s Hurricane Helene Lies & Dissecting His Projection
In an excellent example of anti-disinformation journalism, CNN’s senior fact-checker Daniel Dale went through a full timeline of Trump’s lies in his latest article published on Sunday. Dale didn’t mince words, calling Trump’s claims “a barrage of lies and distortions.” That’s exactly what they are.
Many of Trump’s nefarious lies about Hurricane Helene are actually blatant forms of projection. Trump has a history of projecting his own worldview onto his political opponents and falsely accusing them of corruption he’s guilty of - a classic authoritarian tactic that I’ve analyzed in this newsletter before.
Last Monday, Trump sent a baseless post on Truth Social accusing the Biden-Harris Administration and Governor Roy Cooper of “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.” This is a blatant lie. But of course, most lies from Trump are confessions.
Politico reported that when Trump was in office, he repeatedly hesitated to grant disaster aid to Democratic states, and in one case, he had to be convinced with voter data showing that Republicans were in impacted areas:
“A review of Trump’s record by POLITICO’s E&E News and interviews with two former Trump White House officials show that the former president was flagrantly partisan at times in response to disasters and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.
Mark Harvey, who was Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, told E&E News on Wednesday that Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after deadly wildfires in 2018 because of the state’s Democratic leanings.
But Harvey said Trump changed his mind after Harvey pulled voting results to show him that heavily damaged Orange County, California, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.”
That’s incredibly damning and adds to the evidence we all saw with our own eyes, especially when it came to California’s wildfires, as Trump constantly threatened to withhold aid throughout his presidency.
In another example of this projection, Trump has repeatedly accused Kamala Harris, who is currently Vice President, not President, of transferring disaster money to housing for migrants. In a Thursday rally, Trump said, “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants, many of whom should not be in our country.” First off, Congress has only appropriated $650 million for housing migrants this year, not billions. Also, FEMA has $35 billion in relief funds designated for 2024.
The White House has denied Trump’s claims. FEMA has denied this. There is more than enough FEMA funding, and it is not being diverted to migrants. This claim is a bald-faced lie, but once again, another confession from Trump.
While the Biden-Harris Administration has not diverted disaster money to house migrants, the Trump Administration did. Washington Post Editor and fact-checker Glenn Kessler published a great piece spotlighting this:
“Trump has a habit of assuming other politicians act in the same way as he would. So we wondered why he would accuse Biden of raiding the FEMA disaster fund to handle undocumented migrants.
It turns out that’s because he did this. In 2019, the Trump administration, in the middle of hurricane season, told Congress that it was taking $271 million from DHS programs, including $155 million from the disaster fund, to pay for immigration detention space and temporary hearing locations for asylum seekers who had been forced to wait in Mexico. ‘The U.S. is facing a security and humanitarian crisis on the Southern border,’ the administration said in its notice that it was redirecting the funds.”
You see the pattern? Trump repeatedly accuses his opponents of his own actions.
Trump and other right-wing voices have also said that FEMA is only providing $750 in relief to individuals struggling in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. That is also a lie. FEMA has explicitly said that this is only “an upfront, flexible payment to help cover essential items like food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies.” In fact, FEMA can provide up to $42,500 in home repair assistance.
Trump also said Georgia Governor Brian Kemp hasn’t been able to get ahold of President Biden, but Governor Kemp said he’s spoken to Biden, and “he offered that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly.”
Trump also falsely claimed that there are “no helicopters, no rescue” in North Carolina. The truth: The North Carolina National Guard posted on Twitter on Thursday that their “air assets have completed 146 flight missions, resulting in the rescue of 538 people and 150 pets.”
Other Republican lawmakers have jumped on the lies, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who went further than most by posting, “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” I mean, do I even need to debunk that for you? I think you got it.
Elon Musk is also using his massive Twitter platform to elevate many of these lies. And he’s not the only one amplifying them.
As PBS NewsHour has reported, far-right extremist groups have been spreading these Helene lies, warning that land is going to be seized from residents. PBS also spotlighted the foreign interference efforts amplifying these lies:
“State-run media and disinformation campaigns run by China and Russia have amplified false and misleading claims about the response to the storm. Both countries have used social media and state news stories to criticize responses to past U.S. natural disasters, part of a larger effort to stoke division and distrust among Americans.”
Those are just some examples from the firehose of disinformation we’ve all been enduring over the past week. This disinformation effort is now just standard operating procedure of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement he represents.
When Trump is seeking power, he tries to gaslight the public into thinking everything is worse than it actually is. When he’s an incumbent seeking to hold on to power that he already has, like in 2020, he downplays crises.
Remember 2020? Donald Trump downplayed the pandemic, lied about it, tried to manipulate case numbers, botched the response, and 400,000 died of COVID-19 during his presidency. We literally have Trump on tape with journalist Bob Woodward in February 2020, admitting to lying about COVID’s deadliness. How many people died believing him?
Countless American lives would’ve been saved if we had a competent, honest president in office during the pandemic.
How is this relevant to the choice we face in the election next month? This tells you everything you need to know about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. While Trump is spreading self-serving lies, Kamala Harris is helping to manage a government response and helping Americans. One is clearly more presidential.
During the next national crisis, if they were to win this election, who do you think will be thinking about helping you, and who do you think will be thinking about helping themselves?
The answer to that question is a no-brainer and should be determinative in deciding who you’re voting for.
I can always count on you to pull things together for me, Ahmed. The grift is almost unbelievable. But perhaps this will help break through to those who recognize projection and then follow the facts. Thanks for including the links to so many great sources.
Excellent analysis, Ahmed.