DonOld Trump and a host of crass
attention whores across the GOP and the reich-wing idiosphere have been
ruthlessly exploiting the tragedy of Hurricane Helene, spreading
lies and conspiracy theories to further their own interests. And unfortunately this isn't just
harmless nonsense; it is causing panic and hampering recovery
efforts.
Hurricane Helene has been one
of the deadliest hurricanes to make landfall in the mainland
United States in the modern era -- with more than 200 people dead
as of this writing, hundreds more missing, and the death toll sure to get drastically worse, according to Rowan County, North Carolina Sheriff
Travis Allen. Thousands of survivors have had their lives upended
-- many have lost everything -- and it's an ongoing nightmare for
victims and aid workers alike. Unfortunately but inevitably,
Helene has also provided endless opportunities for
#NeverWasMyPresident DonOld John Trump and a host
of lesser attention whores to mouth off and exploit the tragedy
for their own purposes.
It should come as no surprise that Trump is using the storm to
further his political ends, while much of the American reich is
also politicizing it, and the usual run of social media
conspiranoids and conspicuous contrarians are milking the
disaster furiously in their endless quest for a few precious
drops of attention.
For his part, Trump has been busy pretending to care about the
storm victims, while pretending that Kamala Harris doesn't
care (spoiler: actually, she does care), and unjustly slamming the Biden administration for
its response to the storm. From an AP story by Matthew Daly, September 30, 2024 (via the
ABC News site):
Former President Donald Trump criticized the
Biden administration’s response to the widespread
devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, even as his supporters have called for cuts to
federal agencies that warn of weather disasters and deliver
relief to hard-hit communities.
As president, Trump delayed
disaster aid for
hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico and diverted
money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in order to finance an effort to return
undocumented migrants to Mexico. And Project 2025, backed by Trump supporters, would restructure
FEMA to limit aid to states and says that the National
Weather Service, which provides crucial data on hurricanes
and other storms, “should be broken up and downsized.”
Trump claimed
without evidence Monday
that the Biden administration and North Carolina's Democratic
governor were “going out of their way to not help people in
Republican areas.” And Trump adviser Stephen Miller said
President Joe Biden “failed to evacuate or rescue” U.S.
citizens, “just like you failed in Afghanistan.''
And the Trumpian lies just went on and on. From AP, also on September 30:
Donald Trump repeatedly spread
falsehoods Monday about the federal response to Hurricane
Helene despite claiming not to be politicizing the disaster
as he toured hard-hit areas in south Georgia.
The former president and Republican nominee claimed upon
landing in Valdosta that President Joe Biden was “sleeping”
and not responding to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who he said
was “calling the president and hasn’t been able to get
him.” He repeated the claim at an event with reporters
after being told Kemp said he had spoken to Biden.
“He’s lying, and the governor told him he was lying,”
Biden said Monday.
The White House previously announced that Biden spoke by
phone Sunday night with Kemp and North Carolina Gov. Roy
Cooper, as well as Scott Matheson, mayor of Valdosta,
Georgia, and Florida Emergency Management Director John Louk.
Kemp confirmed Monday morning that he spoke to Biden the
night before.
Like everything Trump does, this goes far
beyond politix-as-usual. An October 4, 2024 piece on the conservative Bulwark site elaborates on the harm and chaos that Trump and
his allies are causing with their campaign of lies.
Trump has argued that FEMA has depleted
its storm relief funds because it spent much of that money
“housing” illegal migrants. His allies have accused FEMA
of confiscating property, of making people apply for help, of
asking for cash donations, and of preventing everyone from Elon Musk to the Department of Defense from helping out with the response efforts.
Virtually all of them have pushed stories insisting that
Kamala Harris told storm victims they could get only $750 in
aid. (That’s just one type of assistance they can get
quickly, not the full amount available.)
Things have gotten bad enough that on Friday, FEMA took the
step of posting
a “rumor response” webpage. The White House put out a
memo of its own accusing Republican leaders of spreading “bald
faced lies” and “poison.” One official, speaking to The
Bulwark, said they feared there could be on-the-ground
confrontations involving people who believed FEMA was trying
to plunder the dispossessed.
Here is a direct link to FEMA's Hurricane Helene rumor response page.
To MAGAts, however, the fact that Trump and gang are out-and-out
lying won't matter, nor will the government's attempts to set
the record straight. And from what I've seen in various news
reports, even some of the vics of the hurricane are apparently
taking Trump's in-person appearances at some of the devastated
areas as evidence that he actually cares about them (or more
accurately, that he cares about something beyond getting their
votes in November).
But, giving credit where it is due, infesting
impacted areas with his orange presence and lying about
Biden/Harris aren't the the only things Trump is doing. Despite
his notoriously shaky history with charities, he -- or rather,
his campaign finance director, Meredith O'Rourke --- has launched
a GoFundMe that so far has
raised more than 6.3 million bucks and counting, supposedly to
help Hurricane Helene victims (or more specifically to help
other charities that are providing hurricane relief).
Originally I wrote that the GoFundMe page did not
actually list a charity, and it didn't, but this has since been
updated; several charities are now named: Samaritan's Purse,
Water Mission, Clinch Foundation, and Mtn2Sea Ministries.
According to an October 2 update by the fund's organizer,
"an initial disbursement" has been made and more will
be made as donations continue to come in. Here's a fact check from Reuters,
dated October 4, 2024. (But also see the last couple of
paragraphs in this section.)
Notably, it's not at all clear if Trump himself has been among
those who have made a contribution to this Very Worthy
Cause...but I'm guessing not. And you have to wonder why. From The Daily Beast, October 1, 2024:
Former President Donald
Trump has launched
a GoFundMe to support those affected by Hurricane Helene’s
path of destruction—but some are saying that the Republican
presidential nominee, who is reportedly
worth around $4 billion,
could do a lot to help victims out of his own pocket. The “Trump
authorized” campaign has already raised $3 million from
some 19,000 donations since it appeared yesterday. The list
of the campaign’s biggest contributors is a sampler of
Trump’s most high-profile allies: it features musician Kid
Rock, UFC CEO Dana White, hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman, and
Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, to name a few. It is unclear
whether Trump himself has contributed to the campaign, but
his name does not appear among the list of its top donors—those
who gave between $5,000 and $500,000. Some wondered how much
of an impact Trump’s personal wealth could make for those
affected by Helene, however. “Why did Trump need to start a
GoFundMe to raise money for hurricane victims?” reads
a post with 22,000 likes
from the X account @TheUSASingers. “Isn’t he supposed to
be a billionaire? Can’t he just give them 10 million bucks?”
That Trump has formidable fund-raising clout is
not in dispute. But more than funds are being raised: questions
are being raised as well, at least by folks who aren't blinded
and deafened by Trumplove. Even with the assurances by both
GoFundMe and the fund's organizer, if you are willing to just
take it on faith that every penny of every one of the
contributions (minus GoFundMe's 3 percent cut) will go to the cause of
helping Helene's victims... well, I've got a pair of gold clown
shoes, a share in a social media company, and a $100k watch to
sell you.
After all, as J.D. Wolf pointed out on the Meidas Touch site on
October 4, the fund still has some basic transparency issues. After noting that Samaratin's Purse is an established
charity (and that Trump had falsely taken credit for the charity's
"truckloads" of hurricane relief supplies), Wolf added:
Trump's GoFundMe hasn't linked to the
organizations for easy identification. MeidasTouch was able
to find groups operating under the Water Mission and Mtn2Sea
Ministries, but couldn't locate any entity providing
hurricane relief under the name "Clinch
Foundation."...
...We don't know the amounts Trump is
donating to any of the groups or how much he has left to
donate. With the Trump family history of impropriety
involving charities, Trump needs to do better.
Also of note, the long-time President and Chairman
of the Board of Samaritan's Purse is Christofascist and devout Trumpian Franklin Graham, who, among numerous other sins, defended Trump by deflection and whataboutism in the
wake of the violent January 6 insurrection that Trump incited.* What I'm wondering is: will any of
the funds donated to Samaritan's purse from the GoFundMe be
redirected into Trump's pocket? It's not beyond the realm of
possibility.
Harping on HAARP (and those evil
Dems)
Meanwhile, in the larger reich-wing idiosphere, there's a new
conspiranoid narrative in town: Democrats are responsible for
Hurricane Helene. We've heard the wind blowing from the same
direction before, regarding Dems being to blame for all manner of
tragedy and evil and disaster, but here we go again. From The Daily Kos, September 30, 2024:
Brace yourself, because if you thought
Donald Trump’s racist “cats and dogs”
lies were bad enough, it won’t be long before this bit of
QAnon and Q-adjacent insanity ends up in one of his rambling,
incoherent campaign screeds.
I’m talking about Democrats controlling the weather.
Conservative influencer Matt Wallace, with his 2.1 million X
followers, lays out the case here.
Don’t worry guys, weather
modification isn’t real! It’s just a coincidence that
Hurricane Helene is one of the most devastating “inland
damage storms” in history and that hundreds of
pro-Trump counties are being massively impacted during
the most important election of our lifetimes.
Obviously the elites would never be
evil enough to create hurricanes designed to interfere
with “democracy”… Pay no attention to the storms
currently brewing in the Atlantic either! You can ask any
mainstream scientist and they will tell you that it isn’t
even possible to create those or target them at certain
areas.
Just stay silent. No need to vote or
expose anything. You wouldn't want to be called a
conspiracy theorist right? Couldn’t have that. So
please ignore your own eyes and don’t share this post
or investigate further.
In truth, of course, if there are bad guys in
this tale of yet another storm of the century, Dems/liberals are
definitely not it. More from The Daily Kos article:
...liberals didn’t control [Hurricane
Helene]. In fact, we’ve been trying to tell anyone who
would listen that these megastorms will become the norm if
climate change remains unaddressed, and they don’t want to
listen. Quite ironically, it is them, the climate deniers,
who are in large part to blame.
Instead, they’re claiming that HAARP—a
research project in Alaska studying the ionosphere for
communication and surveillance technologies—can’t just control the weather, it can even cause devastating earthquakes.
High-profile conservative nutbags have spent the weekend
blaming HAARP and the dastardly Democrats behind it for
specifically targeting Trump counties for malicious purposes
(you can see here, here, here, here, and here, just
for starters).
The thing is, if Dems really had that much control
over the weather, wouldn't they just target Mar-a-Lago, at a time
when they were pretty sure Trump would be home, and/or hit key
Trump areas closer to Election Day, and/or spare Asheville, North
Carolina, a key blue area?
Alas, logic has rarely been a criterion for the
conspiracy-minded. Among the logic-free loonies are reich-wing
legislators such as Marjorie Taylor "Jewish Space Laser" Greene,
who has been spreading the weather control narrative on Xitter. On September 30 she shared a map, created by the aforementioned Matt
Wallace, that shows hurricane affected areas with an overlay of
2020 election results, and apparently is supposed to demonstrate
that red areas have been targeted and blue areas spared. (In
truth, the damage caused by Hurricane Helene has created challenges up- and down-ballot for both
political parties, particularly in the battleground state of
North Carolina.)
This is far from the first time that the conspiranoid loons have
harped on HAARP and weather control and whatnot, and it won't be
the last. I wrote about this back in 2017, in the wake of yet another devastating
hurricane, Harvey (which hit my neck of
the woods).
Apart from the election-manipulation narrative,
other conspiranoid stories are making the rounds as well. In a
recent post, a proudly Trumpian blogger claimed to know the real,
true cause of hurricanes and floods, 'cause it's on seekrit government documents. The post links to a section on a
conspiracy site called Stop World Control [spoiler: it's WEATHER CONTROL]. But and the blogger
added her own pet theory about Asheville.
I fully believe that the flooding in
Ashville [sic], NC was a purposeful land grab just like the
direct energy weapons unleashed on Maui…
Ah, yes... the Maui Wildfire Conspiranoid
Loonapaloooza. I wrote about that one too.
Never one for originality, the Trumpanzee blogger is far from the only person to promote the
land-grab lunacy re Hurricane Helene; in fact, apart from the election manipulation theory it's it's
one of the top nutter narratives.
Not that setting the record straight on the weather-modification
articles of faith will matter to those who are attached to
conspiracy tales like orange glop to Trump's face, but there's this from Politifact:
Hurricane
Helene was not a product of weather modification. That’s Pants
on Fire!
There’s no proof that Hurricane
Helene was formed through weather modification. Bart Geerts,
professor at the University of Wyoming Department of
Atmospheric Science, told PolitiFact that’s
"false."
"NOAA confirms that there are no weather modification
activities that could have resulted in Hurricane Helene.
Hurricanes form on their own given the right conditions and
that was the case with Helene," Monica Allen, director
of public affairs for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration Research division, told PolitiFact.
Allen cited Project Stormfury, a NOAA project in the 1960s
that "involved seeding existing hurricanes."
Attempted on four hurricanes, the project studied how seeding
clouds with silver iodide could lead to a decrease in the
hurricane’s strongest winds.
"This project ended in 1983 because it had, at best,
mixed results, and there were concerns about unintended
consequences," Allen said. "Since then, NOAA has
done no weather modification."
But hey...that's what They want you to
believe. Conspiranoids and conspicuous contrarians, of course,
know better. And they will continue to let everyone know what
they know throughout the aftermath of this storm and the next one
and the next.
And it can't be emphasized enough that as
Hurricane Helene recovery efforts continue, this is causing
genuine harm to thousands of people. People are even threatening
to kill FEMA workers because of the toxic lies being told by mega-influencers such as
Trump's arguably most powerful ally at the moment, the profoundly
evil Elon Musk.
It's gotten so bad that even
some of the GOP officials who are actually in the thick of things
are pleading for the nonsense to stop. North Carolina State Senator Kevin Corbin, to give but one example, wrote this on Facebook on October 3, 2024:
Friends can I ask a small favor? Will
you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is
floating all over Facebook and the internet about the floods
in WNC. Example: FEMA is stealing money from donations, body
bags ordered but government has denied, bodies not being
buried, government is controlling the weather from
Antarctica, government is trying to get lithium from WNC,
stacks of bodies left at hospitals, and on and on and on.
PLEASE help stop this junk. It is just a distraction to
people trying to do their job. Folks, this is a catastrophic
event of which this country has never known. It is the
largest crisis event in the history of N.C. The state is
working non-stop. DOT has deployed workers from all over the
state. Duke power has 10,000 workers on this. FEMA is here.
The National Guard is here in large numbers. My Senate
district is 8 counties and it takes 3 hours to drive across
it in good weather…. And this disaster is 25 counties in
N.C. This is going to take MONTHS if not years to overcome.
Government will play a role in this cleanup. We are going to
make sure the state chips in some massive money. But
Government is not the total solution. YES, there are a lot of
neighbors helping neighbors and that’s good and the way it
should be. Please don’t let these crazy stories consume you
or have you continually contact your elected officials to see
if they are true. I just talked to one Senator that has had
15 calls TODAY about why we don’t stop …….. “fill in
the blank.” 98% chance it’s not true and if it is a
problem, somebody is aware and on it and not waiting for a
post to go thru 10,000 people to be addressed. Thanks for
listening but I’ve been working on this 12 hours a day
since it started and I’m growing a bit weary of intentional
distractions from the main job …. which is to help our
citizens in need.
I hope Senator Corbin's message is doing some
good, but my feeling is that the dedicated conspiranoids will
just consider that Corbin has gone over to the Dark Side.
Meanwhile, as Trump blows on and lesser loons babble on, here is one of many sources of legitimate information about how you can actually help the victims of
Hurricane Helene.
* While Franklin Graham's nose has an ugly
orange stain, on the other hand, Graham's niece, Jerushah Duford
(whose mother Virginia "Gigi" Graham Tchividjian is
Graham's oldest daughter), has spoken out strongly against Trump and for
Kamala Harris.
This post has been amended and updated
since its original publication on October 3, 2024.
~ CC
