“I’m sick and tired of this crap": Officials debunk Trump's "truly dangerous" Hurricane Helene lies

Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed lies about immigrants since at least 2015, so when a hurricane devastated large swathes of the southeast last month, killing over 200 people, he predictably sought to blame the disaster on Democrats and undocumented immigrants. At first, what CNN described as the Republican candidate’s “barrage of lies and distortions” centered on claims that President Joe Biden was denying aid to red states, refusing to even take their calls. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Aaron Ellenburg, sheriff of Rutherford County, North Carolina, told The New York Times, referring to claims spread by Trump ally Laura Loomer, a self-styled white nationalist who openly celebrates the killing of migrants, about FEMA supposedly taking hurricane-damaged property from Republicans and giving it to elite business interests looking to mine it for lithium. FEMA now has a regularly updated section on its website debunking viral claims spread by Trump and associates, including the assertion that it’s now “in the process of confiscating Helene survivor property.” Speaking Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell described the Trump-Vance disinformation campaign as “frankly ridiculous” but also “truly dangerous.” Thousands of federal employees working to provide aid to hurricane survivors are being smeared as part of an elite plot to displace red-blooded Americans with foreigners and lithium mines. In the meantime, the party will continue to lie, with Trump again claiming Monday on his website, Truth Social, that “almost all of the FEMA money” had gone “to Illegal Migrants.” Neither conspiracy theories nor politicians lying is a new thing in America, but it would be a mistake to conclude that nothing has changed since 2016, when one of the two major political parties was taken over by a man that who took fringe falsehoods and made them his entire platform.