Donald Trump spent days trying to take political advantage of Hurricane Helene, which devastated six southeastern states and left behind At least 200 people died. He’s not just there declared Joe Biden And Kamala Harris received a “POOR GRADE” for the administration’s handling of the storm, despite bipartisan praise for its response (“It’s been fantastic,” said South Carolina’s Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, speak this week). Trump has bluntly accused the administration of intentionally denying aid to Republican areas affected by the storm, even lying at a rally Thursday that Democrats “thief” The relief money should have gone to storm victims and “[gave] for illegal immigrants, they want to vote for them this season.”
“Kamala spent all of her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing illegal immigrants,” he said. declared in Saginaw, Michigan on Thursday.
That is untrueOf course. Worse, Trump himself may have done exactly what he is accusing the Biden administration of, according to Politico reported on Thursday. Two former White House officials told the news outlet that, as president, Trump was reluctant to provide disaster relief to areas he viewed as pro-Democratic — including post-Battle California Deadly wildfires in 2018. Mark Harveya member of his National Security Council staff, who has supported Harris since then, told Politico that Trump relented and provided aid to California only after he was cleared that Orange County “There are more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.”
“We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those affected areas,” Harvey said, “to show him these are the people who voted for you.”
Olivia Troyeanother former Trump administration official who supported Harris, confirmed Harvey’s account and said the episode foreshadowed how Trump would approach disaster relief if elected to another term. “American voters out there don’t even really pay attention to politics and their house is gone,” Troye told Politico on Wednesday, “the president of the United States is judging them on how they vote, and They don’t even vote.”
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Such a partisan response would constitute a serious abuse of power, but is perhaps not surprising. He all but admitted his disdain for Democratic-leaning areas during the COVID pandemic response in 2020. Death toll, he speak in September of that year, not so bad “if you take out the blue states”: “We’re really at a very low point,” he boasted at the time.
Now, Trump is seeking to exploit Helene — which devastated North Carolina and Georgia, two battlegrounds in this fall’s election — for his political gain, seeking to portray his opponent as the party faction and incorporated that into his vicious attacks on immigrants, with help from the right wing. wing-like Elon Muskwho has amplification baseless claims. Even Republican governors in the affected states of Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia opposed Trump, praising the administration’s response. “He just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’” Georgia Gov Brian Kempwho will appeared with Trump on Friday for the first time since 2020, said about his call with Biden this week, despite Trump’s claim that he was unable to contact the administration. “And I told him, you know, we’ve got what we need, we’re going to work through the federal process.” But that didn’t stop the wild claims, with one Trump ally, Marjorie Taylor Greeneeven suggested that the Democrats had created a literal storm destroying Republican-leaning areas. “Yes, they can control the weather,” Greene posted on Thursday night X. “It’s funny that someone would lie and say it couldn’t be done.”
