The Right Meets Hurricane Helene With a Storm of Lies

As communities across the Southeast continue to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Helen — and as West Florida braces for Category 5 Hurricane Milton to make landfall later this week — hurricane victims and first responders are battling the storm’s raging waves of misinformation surrounding federal rescue efforts. The false claims began in earnest with Trump’s incendiary claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had run out of funds after directing $1 billion to shelter migrants, the universal civil destruction demons of the Trump movement. This piece of political folklore first appeared in the fever swamps of social media, but was soon graced with a cover New York Postand gave the occasion for solemn editorials in other right-wing newspapers. In fact, only one US president has ever directed FEMA money to support migrants – and that was Donald Trump in 2019 a Washington Post the report.

Of course, Republicans’ actions are usually attributed to enemies in the unfiltered, overheated right-wing messaging complex, but this false claim was only the opening of a steady stream of paranoid conspiracy claims about inadequate, corrupt, and expropriation-minded federal disaster relief after Elena flattened communities on in the southeast. When Kamala Harris said in an interview that storm victims would receive an instant $750 FEMA grant to cover essential needs like shelter, food and infant formula, it was reduced in MAGA discourse to a false statement that the federal government was giving to every person affected by the storm only $750 or more. Trump also took to his Truth Social account to claim, again falsely, that the Biden administration was denying desperately needed help to Republican districts in North Carolina.

While one side of the MAGAverse accused the feds of brutally devaluing the victims of the storm, another group argued that they were completely displacing them by taking land from eminent domain. Elon Musk’s innuendo cesspool account, X, announced that the government had taken over the storm-ravaged town of Chimney Rock, North Carolina, and allowed corpses to pile up in the open as they carried out their sinister scheme. That was all complete bullshitbut generated 3 million views on Twitter and over a million more when it crossed over to TikTok.

And where his excitable users spread destructive lies, Musk himself will surely be behind. The stupid MAGA cheerleader declared that FEMA officials are guilty of “treason” and raised another post alleging that scarce FEMA funds were diverted to undeserving migrants. He also supported the false claim that the Federal Aviation Administration blocked airspace over storm-hit communities, crippling Musk’s connectivity company Starlink and preventing helicopter aid from arriving. Musk also confirmed even more ungodly claims by federal officials blocking aid and confiscation of goods on the ground in Helen’s way. The FAA and Starlink fell apart when Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg broke into Musk’s tape to debunk them, and scheduled the next call with a man-boy without a filter.

All this digital advertising of lies has created a real danger in the midst of a terrible disaster. FEMA is not devoting limited resources and time to migrant claims after the storm, but the agency had to release web page to discredit the false stories about nature and the extent of its relief efforts so that affected citizens can actually get the help they need. The North Carolina Department of Public Safety was forced to take the same precautionsto ensure that victims know that help is indeed available to them. Political leaders in North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida have all petitions issued For Trump and his followers to stop spreading false claims about aid is all to no avail as MAGA propagandists hope to gain political benefit from all the slander. (Yes, all of Trump’s claims that the Biden administration politicized FEMA’s response beyond any point of effectiveness is still another example of blatant projection from the right, and yes, I’m tired of constantly pointing it out.)

Indeed, federal lawmakers now refuse to provide the most basic safeguards against the expected disaster of Milton’s landfall. An effort to reconvene the House of Representatives to vote on a bill to provide additional emergency funding for hurricane relief was supported by many GOP lawmakers in the Southeast this week. said Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnsonwhich—I hope you are sitting—also repeated MAGA myths around the federal government’s response to Helen. Also, the post-Helyn storm surge on the right is a likely prototype for the similar stream of nonsense the MAGAverse is sure to unleash should Trump lose the 2024 election. Jay Kuo and Brian Beutler everyone argued. On this misinformation front, Johnson, a persistent refuser of the 2020 electionalready proves faithful apparatchik. (Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, perpetually leaning toward his right-wing presidential primary, has largely cemented his failed presidential bid by rejecting federal Covid aid, refused to take calls from either Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris on post-Hellenic cleanup plans, among others a talentless act of political theater will probably harm the lives of his constituents.)

Such crass ideological pomp during a major emergency is deeply distasteful in itself. But there is a much wider historical projection that contributes to this bad faith failure to govern. The project of conservative governance experienced one of its worst redemption moments in 2005, when the George W. Bush administration failed to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans—just 73 miles from Johnson’s hometown of Baton Rouge. No one knows better than the Speaker of the House what a failed federal response can do to a storm-ravaged community — and yet, in words and actions, he’s doing everything in his power to block effective post-Hellenic and pre-Milton relief efforts landfall. Johnson, Musk, and Trump were doing exactly what they were happy to accuse federal emergency officials of doing — impeding, diverting, and otherwise tormenting the flow of critically needed resources for their own mercenary and short-term political gain. You could cite this as a textbook example of story trickery if everything wasn’t so unbearably stupid, cruel, and boring.