First came the hurricanes. Then came the whirlwind of derision and disinformation — all aimed at the Biden administration by former President Donald Trump.
Over the last two weeks, Trump has used the twin disasters of hurricanes Helene and Milton to hammer President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their handling of the storms.
The attacks track with how Trump has approached politics since he burst onto the scene nearly a decade ago, weaving together personal insults with half-truths and outright lies.
But his focus on the storms — and the way he’s used them as a political cudgel — has morphed into one of Trump’s closing arguments in the final stretch of the 2024 presidential campaign.
“Western North Carolina, and the whole state, for that matter, has been totally and incompetently mismanaged by Harris/Biden,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene’s rampage through the southeastern United States.
“They can’t get anything done properly, but I will make up for lost time, and do it right, when I get there,” he added. “Hold on, and vote these horrible ‘public servants’ out of office. They are incapable of doing the job.”
Criticizing elected leaders for mishandling disasters isn’t anything new. President George W. Bush, for example, was widely panned for his administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
But the way Trump has deployed the storms on the campaign trail takes it to a different level. Instead of calls for unity, Trump has tried to use the disasters to incite anger against the Biden administration and rally supporters to his side.
And one of Trump’s powerful tools — and potentially one of his most dangerous — is how he’s spreading conspiracy theories and false claims to do it. On Thursday, Biden said FEMA workers responding to Hurricane Helene had received death threats due to all the misinformation.
Most of Trump’s attacks have centered on Helene, which killed at least 230 people and likely caused tens of billions of dollars in damages.
More than 8,000 federal workers have been called upon to support the response effort, according to FEMA. And as of Wednesday, $344 million in disaster aid had reached 370,000 households.
But Trump breezed past those contributions Wednesday as he took aim at both the Biden administration and Harris, his chief rival in the presidential race.
“It was disgraceful what they did,” Trump said at a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania. “She didn’t send anything or anyone at all. Days passed. No help as men, women and children drowned.”
The accusation builds on a separate line of attack Trump pursued right after the storm. He said without evidence that the Biden administration — and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) — were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” affected by Hurricane Helene.
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