This election’s “October surprise” arrived in September in the form of Hurricane Helene, followed this week by Hurricane Milton.
Helene killed 213 people, making it the second-deadliest storm in the last 50 years. And it could cost up to $250 billion in property damage and economic losses. Milton was expected to be even more “Biblical,” but turned out not to be. Its still-substantial human and economic tolls are yet to be calculated.
The political message of these storms should be, “It’s Climate Change, Stupid,” and should inure to the benefit of Democrats, who believe that global warming is real, “man-made” by fossil fuels’ pumping tons of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere, and that action must be taken to shift to cleaner forms of energy.
This is opposed to most of the Republican Party, whose leader, Donald Trump, has labeled climate change a “hoax” and whose energy policy is “drill, baby, drill” for oil and natural gas.
The public, having experienced world record high temperatures and annual increases in climate-related catastrophes — droughts, storms, floods and wildfires — has joined an overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and that measures need to be taken to reduce CO2 emissions and shift to clean energy sources.
Many scientists and global leaders maintain that climate change, if not arrested soon, could cause massive famine, flooding of coastal cities, large-scale “climate migration,” and rising international tension. Ultimately, climate change may be a danger to human existence.
Democrats—and people who’ve experienced extreme climate events—are most supportive of climate action while Republicans are not. Yet Democrats evidently believe it’s bad form to exploit the recent hurricanes for political advantage, and so far few if any have.
The same can’t be said of Trump, other Republicans and allied conspiracy peddlers. At a Michigan rally, Trump charged that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants, many of whom should not be in our country.”
Even after the Biden administration countered that and other hurricane disinformation, Trump repeated his charges in North Carolina and Georgia. He said that the administration “stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”
He also falsely charged that federal aid is limited to $750. Actually, that’s just the immediate, upfront aid survivors get to cover basic pressing needs like food, water, and baby formula. The current limit for temporary housing and home repairs is $42,500.
The Biden administration confirmed that its disaster-relief money is running low and needs Congressional replenishment, but said that funds are sufficient to respond to the current emergencies. And it also pointed out that the Department of Homeland Security’s funds for FEMA disaster response—$57 billion–and for aiding immigrants—$650 million–are entirely separate.
Trump’s lying about hurricane responses obviously isn’t the worst of his many transgressions. But the spread of hurricane disinformation is also dangerous, discouraging victims from claiming available aid, inciting threats against FEMA officials, and undermining faith that the federal government will come to the aid of disaster victims..
Republican response to Trump’s false charges has followed a familiar pattern, though. Among prominent Republicans, only Mitt Romney has specifically denounced Trump’s spreading disinformation. “When it comes to taking a holiday from the truth,” he said, Trump “has taken the longest vacation.”
Some others, like Govs. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Henry McMaster of South Carolina, have praised the Biden administration’s response to Helene, which battered their states—but without mentioning Trump. But still others, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance, and other GOP members of Congress, have repeated and supported Trump’s charges. Others remained silent.
Trump’s charges set off an avalanche of misinformation, substantially promoted by Elon Musk on his social media site, X, and in statements of his own. On, X, Musk also credited reports that authorities in North Carolina had “taken control” to stop FEMA operatives from interfering with locals’ rescue and aid work. “FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason,” Musk wrote on X.
Also on X, a North Carolina resident alleged that FEMA’s $750 payment was a loan, not a grant, and that if a recipient failed to pay it back, his or her property could be seized. “Don’t take it,” he said.
FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said, on the basis of past instances, that she expected disinformation’s spread after the two hurricanes. But, she said, “(This) is absolutely the worst I have ever seen.”
Biden denounced the spread of hurricane lies as “un-American.” Harris’s campaign unleashed a new ad across swing states in which former Trump administration officials slam the Republican nominee for having hesitated to provide disaster aid while he was president to certain states that he considered politically hostile. A former aide confirmed that report to Politico.
Trump’s dangerous lies about this and about Somali refugees’ eating the pets of Springfield, Ohio, residents, leading to threats against them, deserve to hurt his election chances. As do his thousands of other lies, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his opposition to climate change reduction and his intention to fill all key federal positions with personal loyalists, threatening democracy.
And yet, polls indicate he has an even chance of returning to the White House.
I feel sick when I remember the elation of 2008 after Barack Obama was elected; he’s certainly been the outstanding president of my lifetime. Now, when he warns us not to elect a “guy who sells stuff” …. he doesn’t just mean a guy hawking steaks, bobble heads, boots and worthless ‘university’ degrees …. he means a guy who sells access to the White House.
The TrumpRepublican propaganda campaign is a marvel of malevolent ingenuity.
Take one example from Mort Kondracke’s article:
“(Trump) said that the administration ‘stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.’ ”
The cleverness of such duplicitous lying somehow surprises Democrats (like me) and ‘Independents’ (a species rumored to exist, but one I have yet to encounter in the wild), leading us to wonder what in tarnation is wrong with this country of ours.
To Democrats and reasonable people, this statement is absurd. We can go to numerous news sources — radio, TV, internet — and hear this misinformation be corrected. “The lies they tell are so stupid and so easily debunked”, we say to each other, “no sane person can possibly believe them.”
Yet apparently, many do. Democrats may then think, “Are they really insane, or just stupid?” ( I have skewed the question by proposing only two possible answers, though others exist).
The answer is no, Republican voters are not insane, nor of below average IQ (though in some cases they are undoubtedly “low-information voters”). The problem is the tricky way in which the lie is constructed, like matryoshka dolls, each lie encased in another and so on. Let’s break it down into its constituent parts:
“They” (the Biden Administration) “stole” (re-apportioned?) the FEMA money “just like they stole it from a bank” (a false analogy) so they could give it to “their illegal immigrants” (as if all illegal immigrants were “theirs” to do with as they choose) “that they want to have vote for them” (ergo this is all part of a plan to ‘steal’ an election!).
There are three separate allegations being told here: 1) “stealing” money from FEMA 2) the Biden Administration has a greater interest in “illegal immigrants” rather than American citizens 3) and that immigrants will vote illegally in favor of the Democrats. All three are complete fabrications, but woven together they tell a story that may well seem plausible, especially so in the case of people whose homes have just been destroyed and who are desperate for help.
This fits nicely within the long-standing (and debunked) Trumpian claim that the 2020 election was “stolen”, which adds to its credibility. “Where there’s smoke, there must be a fire, amirite?”
While I feel for the people whose communities have been devastated and lives disrupted by the recent storms, I feel only anger and disgust at the vileness of the people behind these damaging lies.