White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been promoted to the position of senior adviser to the president while continuing to serve as press secretary for the remainder of President Biden’s term. Ms. Jean-Pierre proved once again during her October 7th White House press briefing why the most accurate title for her service to the Biden-Harris administration is Chief Propaganda Officer. She resorted to the Biden-Harris administration’s customary accusation of “misinformation” when asked why the Biden administration is providing additional money to Lebanon while North Carolina residents in need are not getting enough federal disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Ms. Jean-Pierre charged that the question asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy was premised on misinformation:
PETER DOOCY: President Biden is fond of saying, “Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.” If he has money for people in Lebanon right now without Congress having to come back, what does it say about his values — there’s not enough money right now for people in North Carolina who need it. That’s not misinformation.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Wait, no it is, your whole premise of the question is misinformation, sir. Yes, it is…the way you’re asking me the question is misinformation. There is money that we are allocating to the impacted areas, and there’s money there to help people who truly need it. There are survivors who need the funding — who need the funding, and it’s there.
PETER DOOCY: You can’t call a question that you don’t like “misinformation.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) does not have enough funding to make it through the rest of the hurricane season, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Moreover, as of October 6th, only nine percent of FEMA staff members were available to deal with Hurricane Milton or any other natural disaster to come, according to the agency’s daily operations briefing cited by the New York Times.
Yet despite all this, Vice President Kamala Harris proudly announced that her administration is sending nearly $157 million in additional assistance to Lebanon to meet the “essential needs” of the Lebanese people. These needs include “food, shelter, water, protection, and sanitation to help those who have been displaced by the recent conflict.” She noted that “This additional support brings total U.S. assistance to Lebanon over the last year to over $385 million.”
While lamenting the “increasingly dire humanitarian situation” in Lebanon, Vice President Harris neglected to mention that it is the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah who is responsible for the manmade humanitarian disaster in Lebanon. Hezbollah launched unprovoked rocket and missile attacks against Israel a year ago in solidarity with Hamas. Israel finally decided in recent weeks that it had enough and mounted a forceful counterattack within Lebanon to eliminate Hezbollah’s leadership, command and control centers, and advanced weaponry.
Hezbollah has brought the “increasingly dire humanitarian situation” upon Lebanon, a country that the terrorist group has largely controlled with Iran’s support. Nevertheless, the Biden-Harris administration is naively sending nearly $157 million more in relief funds to Lebanon without ensuring that none of this money will end up in Hezbollah’s hands. Meanwhile, Americans are not being provided with enough federal assistance to cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. So far, they have only received a paltry $750 each in immediate assistance. And many more Americans impacted by Hurricane Milton and other hurricanes to follow will not get the federal disaster relief they need to survive and rebuild.
As Florida Senator Rick Scott wrote: “If we renamed Florida and North Carolina to Lebanon and Ukraine, maybe Kamala Harris would send disaster relief faster. She’s made it clear that being Americans puts us last in line.”
The Biden-Harris administration has rendered FEMA’s disaster relief program much less effective in other ways as well. For example, FEMA has been criticized for allocating $640.9 million this year in FEMA-administered funds to state and local governments dealing with the influx of illegal immigrants.
“This is easy,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott posted on X. “Mayorkas and FEMA — immediately stop spending money on illegal immigration resettlement and redirect those funds to areas hit by the hurricane. Put Americans first.”
In short, distributing relief assistance starting with the persons most in need, regardless of race, ethnic background, sexual orientation, or gender, is less important to the Biden-Harris administration than engaging in top-down, group identity-driven social engineering.
The truth is that FEMA’s performance in fulfilling its core mission of providing Americans with natural disaster relief has been a disaster on the Biden-Harris administration’s watch. Misinformation about FEMA’s actual performance to date is coming from the administration itself.