As Donald Trump and his allies spread false claims about Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the Republican Party has split into two camps: those who try to dispel the falsehoods, and those who are doubling down on them.<\/p>\n
Helene made landfall on Sept. 26, tearing through parts of Florida and Georgia before devastating much of western North Carolina, ultimately causing more than 230 deaths. Milton made landfall Wednesday evening near Sarasota, Fla., bringing powerful winds, tornadoes and deadly floodwaters.<\/p>\n
As the country digs out, Republicans in storm-battered states appear torn between the need to curb conspiracy theories and fear of drawing a rebuke from Trump just weeks before the election. Many lawmakers and officials have sought to counter these rumors without directly criticizing the former president or their party.<\/p>\n
One of the most prevalent falsehoods spread by Trump is the claim that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has used some disaster relief funds to help migrants. Though the emergency agency and migrant relief programs are both part of the Department of Homeland Security, their funds are in separate accounts, and money earmarked for aid to migrants can\u2019t be transferred to cover hurricane costs.<\/p>\n
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a Trump ally, has also spread the conspiracy that the government controls the weather \u2014 a theory with roots in antisemitic tropes about Jewish people manipulating world events.<\/p>\n
Far-right conspiracist Alex Jones \u2014 who in June was ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages to the families of Sandy Hook school shooting victims after spreading false conspiracies about the shooting \u2014 has spent a few weeks promoting unfounded claims about FEMA and hurricanes in his show Infowars. His live stream shared Wednesday \u2014 in which he claimed that Helene was a government-controlled weapon used against Americans \u2014 received nearly 600,000 views on the social media platform X.<\/p>\n
Some Republicans have sought to discredit such conspiracies, warning that they could erode trust in FEMA and other officials offering lifesaving advice during disasters.<\/p>\n
\u201cHurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the government,\u201d Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican from hard-hit North Carolina, said in a statement Tuesday. \u201cNobody can control the weather.\u201d<\/p>\n
North Carolina state Sen. Kevin Corbin was among the first GOP officials in the hard-hit region to speak out against the rampant misinformation, decrying the \u201cconspiracy theory junk\u201d in a Facebook post last week. Mayor Glenn Jacobs of Knox County, Tenn., also urged his followers last week to \u201cquit spreading those rumors as they are counterproductive to response efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edwards, Corbin and Jacobs all refrained from criticizing Trump or even mentioning the former president. In contrast, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) specifically slammed Trump on Tuesday for amplifying falsehoods about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, and FEMA using disaster money on migrants.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump told us that people in Springfield are eating dogs and cats. He likewise said that FEMA money, our emergency money, instead of helping people that were hit by the hurricane is being used to help illegals,\u201d Romney said during a discussion at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. \u201cI mean, he just makes it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that FEMA ran out of money for the Helene response because it used the funding on people \u201cwho came into the country illegally.\u201d The White House has slammed Trump\u2019s false claim as \u201cpoison.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked for comment on Trump\u2019s false claims, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt repeated them. \u201cThe only misinformation is coming from the Biden-Harris administration,\u201d Leavitt said in an email. \u201cWhite House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lied to the nation Friday when she said it is \u2018categorically false\u2019 that FEMA funds are being used to support illegal immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who visited storm-ravaged areas of North Carolina on Wednesday alongside Edwards and the state\u2019s two Republican U.S. senators, Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, defended Trump\u2019s statements in a news conference Wednesday evening. The speaker said the former president \u201cis expressing his frustration about the lack of resources being provided here,\u201d and he repeated the false claims about migrants.<\/p>\n
In the same news conference, however, Edwards said that he attributes the \u201crumors that are out there\u201d about FEMA funding to \u201cgood old-fashioned storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Edwards issued a lengthy fact sheet dispelling multiple falsehoods about Helene and FEMA. The fact sheet noted that FEMA \u201chas NOT diverted disaster response funding to the border or foreign aid,\u201d and that NOAA official Charles Konrad has \u201cconfirmed that no one has the technology or ability to geoengineer a hurricane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson was among the lawmakers who shared Edwards\u2019s fact sheet on X. FEMA also set up a webpage disputing the conspiracies, stating clearly that \u201cno money is being diverted from disaster response needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greene, for her part, has continued to promote her unfounded theory that \u201cthey control the weather.\u201d She wrote Wednesday that some of the individuals who allegedly control the weather are \u201clisted on NOAA,\u201d referring to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<\/p>\n
In response, Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.) shot back: \u201cHumans cannot create or control hurricanes. Anyone who thinks they can, needs to have their head examined.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked for comment, Greene spokesman Nick Dyer said the congresswoman was not suggesting that Helene was engineered by humans. He said Greene was merely trying to bring attention to what he called \u201cweather manipulation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery one of Congresswoman Greene\u2019s critics \u2026 want to ignore the science-based factual evidence she has shared,\u201d Dyer said. \u201cThey are the ones peddling conspiracy theories about her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greene has apologized for previously embracing the conspiracy theory that the Rothschild family used lasers from space to start wildfires. The Rothschilds, a famous European business dynasty, have repeatedly been subjected to antisemitic allegations that they and other Jews clandestinely manipulate world events for their advantage.<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden, during a White House briefing Wednesday, chided those sharing misinformation.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the last few weeks, there\u2019s been a reckless, irresponsible, relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies that are disturbing people,\u201d Biden said. \u201cIt\u2019s undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been taken and will continue to be taken. It\u2019s harmful to those who need help most.\u201d<\/p>\n
Climatologists and weather experts have expressed dismay at the spread of once-fringe conspiracies about hurricanes into the mainstream.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday, my mother told me I needed to do \u2018deep research\u2019 because everything I know and learned about hurricanes is wrong,\u201d wrote University of Miami climatologist Brian McNoldy, who has long tracked storms in the Atlantic Ocean, on X. \u201cI can\u2019t even process the ignorance and brainwashing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
As Donald Trump and his allies spread false claims about Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the Republican Party has split into two camps: those who try to dispel the falsehoods, and those who are doubling down on them. Helene made landfall on Sept. 26, tearing through parts of Florida and Georgia before devastating much of western […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}