During North Carolina Campaign VP Harris Calls Out Trump’s FEMA Misinformation During Hurricanes Helene And Milton

Trump is among the most prominent voices pushing conspiracy theories and other falsehoods about FEMA and other disaster relief efforts from the federal government

Vice President Kamala Harris called out former president Donald Trump for spreading misinformation about the federal government’s response to hurricanes Helene and Milton while making a campaign stop at a Black church in Greenville, North Carolina on Oct 13.

According to The Associated Press, while Harris did not mention the former president by name, it was clear who she was referring to.

Trump is among the most prominent voices pushing conspiracy theories and other falsehoods about FEMA and disaster relief efforts from the federal government.

Harris told the crowd that despite the heroes who were helping relief efforts without respect to political affiliation, there were others committed to sowing division.

“Yet, church, there are some who are not acting in the spirit of community, and I am speaking of these who have been literally not telling the truth, lying about people who are working hard to help the folks in need, spreading disinformation when the truth and facts are required,” Harris said.

Vice President Harris continued, “The problem with this, beyond the obvious, is it’s making it harder, then, to get people life-saving information if they’re led to believe they cannot trust. And that’s the pain of it all, which is the idea that those who are in need have somehow been convinced that the forces are working against them in a way that they would not seek aid.”

Harris also said that those who are trying to further false narratives are attempting “to gain some advantage for themselves, to play politics with other people’s heartbreak, and it is unconscionable. Now is not a time to incite fear. It is not right to make people feel alone. That is not what leaders, as we know, do in crisis.”

According to Politico, the disinformation campaign coming from Trump and others in the Republican Party was characterized by FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell as the worst she has seen.

Criswell told reporters on an Oct. 8 call, “It is absolutely the worst I have ever seen. It’s creating distrust in the federal government, but also the state government, and we have so many first responders that have been working to go out and help these communities.”

Trump and his sycophants have loudly and baselessly accused federal responders of diverting disaster relief funds to immigrants.

This, of course, has been amplified by Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter and Tesla.

Musk is also a Republican mega-donor and has steered Twitter in the direction of a massive disinformation campaign.

According to Poynter, Musk has made finding misinformation and disinformation as easy as checking a trending topic on the app or website.

Maarten Schenk, the co-founder and chief technology officer at Lead Stories, insinuated to the outlet that in many cases, to find misinformation, it’s as simple as checking Musk’s profile.

“It used to take work to find disinformation on Twitter. You had to set up dashboards and Boolean searches,” Schenk told Poynter. “Nowadays, you just check the trending topics. You can also see what Elon Musk retweets or amplifies.”

According to Politico, President Joe Biden called the sentiments spread by Trump’s misinformation campaign un-American and said they spread fear and mistrust during a hurricane briefing at the White House earlier in October.

“Those who do it, do it to try to damage the administration,” Biden said. “We can take care of ourselves, but it misleads people, it puts people in circumstances where they panic, where they really, really, really worry and think ‘we’re not being taken care of’…It’s un-American, it really is; people are scared to death, people know their lives are at stake.”