The one-two punch of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, arriving just weeks before the presidential election, has set off a level of conspiracy-mongering that was practically unheard of in previous hurricane seasons.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has stated that “they” can control the weather, even doubling down when faced with criticism. One elected official in North Carolina, Rep. Chuck Edwards, went so far as to send a letter to his hurricane-battered constituents, combating the weather-related disinformation.
“Hurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the government to seize and access lithium deposits in Chimney Rock,’ Edwards wrote in the letter. “Nobody can control the weather.” He added, “FEMA is NOT stopping trucks or vehicles with donations, confiscating or seizing supplies, or turning away donations.
The tension of whether to lie about the hurricane response for political gain or to help those efforts also manifested this week at Fox News.
There are sometimes occasions when Fox News’s news side conflicts with its opinion side, which frequently happened in the aftermath of the 2020 election. This happened again this week, with the hurricane, when Sean Hannity shared some talking points that weren’t true and was corrected by the network’s news side.
You have DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas saying FEMA is running out of money and going bankrupt,” Hannity said Tuesday on his show, as reported by The New Republic. “Bankrupt? This has not been a busy hurricane season. This happened to FEMA—FEMA directed more than $1 billion to pay for housing and food for Harris-Biden illegal immigrants.”
Unsurprisingly, none of that is true. Government agencies can’t really ever go “bankrupt,” and in situations where more aid is needed for disaster recovery, such additional aid is usually appropriated by Congress. That has not happened this year, nor has Secretary Mayorkas claimed that it has. The Secretary did say the agency’s funding was “dwindling,” but he did not use the word “bankrupt.
Hannity ended up corrected by the news reporter on his own network, Chad Pergram, based on a fact sheet he obtained from the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee.
Per that fact sheet, the government “has enough funding in the short-term to address immediate needs for both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton,” and that there is “no funding connection between” between FEMA-led immigration program and disaster relief.
FEMA’s website also published a debunking of the claim that “funding for FEMA disaster response was diverted to support international efforts or border related issues,” calling it false.
