During a visit to Georgia on Friday, former President Donald Trump criticized the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene and again leveled false accusations that disaster relief funding had been diverted to support migrants illegally in the United States.
“It’s been a terrible response from the White House,” Trump told reporters at an event in Evans, Georgia. “A lot of the money that was supposed to go to Georgia, and supposed to go to North Carolina and all of the others is going and has gone already — it’s been gone — for people that came into the country illegally.”
Trump has repeatedly politicized — and lied about — the hurricane and relief efforts, criticizing the Biden administration’s efforts even as state and local officials have praised the federal response.
Before Trump’s latest comments, the White House vigorously refuted his criticisms without referring to him by name. In a memo, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said that some Republican leaders are “peddling bald-faced lies.” He said the claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is out of money for hurricane response because of an existing program for cities and towns sheltering migrants is false. “No disaster relief funding at all was used to support migrant housing and services,” he wrote. “None. At. All.”
Bates added that FEMA has the funding it needs for immediate hurricane response and warned about the dangers of propagating such falsehoods, saying they could prevent victims of the storm from seeking assistance. “It is paramount that every leader, whatever their political beliefs, stops spreading this poison,” he wrote.
The Biden administration says that more than $45 million has already been provided for Hurricane Helene survivors and that FEMA has shipped more than 11.5 million meals, more than 12.6 million liters of water, 150 generators and more than 400,000 tarps to the affected areas.
Budget expert Brian Riedl of the conservative Manhattan Institute called claims that FEMA has no money left for hurricane response after spending $640 million on migrants “simply false.” He explained: “Not only are natural disasters addressed in a separate emergency fund, but catastrophic hurricane aid always comes from Congress passing emergency aid bills as large as $80 billion. The $640M spent on migrants is unrelated budget dust. They aren't related.”
Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler awarded Trump “Four Pinocchios” for the funding claim, the most severe rating. “Trump is completely wrong,” Kessler wrote. “Even though Trump was once president, he still appears to have little clue about the appropriations process. What’s even richer is that when he was president, he did exactly what he claims Biden did — take money from FEMA’s disaster fund to fund migrant programs at the southern border.”
Politico reports that Trump has a history of being blatantly partisan in response to disasters — “and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.”
Mark Harvey, who served as Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, told Politico’s E&E News that Trump initially balked at providing wildfire assistance for California and changed his mind only after being shown voter data that made clear that Orange County, California, was home to many of his supporters.
