According to former President Donald Trump, the federal government is intentionally withholding aid to Republican disaster victims. Far-right extremist groups warn on social media that officials plan to bulldoze affected communities and seize the land from residents. A tale straight from science fiction asserts that Washington used weather control technology to steer Helene toward Republican voters in order to tilt the presidential election toward Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. The claims, according to experts and local officials dealing with disaster response, say less about the reality of the widespread damage from Helene than they do about America’s fractured politics and the fear and distrust shadowing an election year marked by assassination attempts and escalating global tension. As rescue work continues and authorities try to separate fact from fiction, the conspiracy theories are not helping. Elected leaders from both parties have had to set the record straight and urge people not to give into fear and rumor. “If everyone could maybe please put aside the hate for a bit and pitch in to help, that would be great,” posted Glenn Jacobs, the retired professional wrestler known as Kane, who is now the Republican mayor of Knox County, Tennessee. Jacobs’ post was intended to rebut rumors that workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were seizing relief supplies from private citizens. Many of the conspiracy theories focus on hard-hit North Carolina, a state key to winning the White House. Rumors circulated that FEMA was raiding storm donations and withholding body bags, forcing local hospitals to stack the bodies of victims. One claim suggested federal authorities would condemn the entire town of Chimney Rock and prohibit resettlement in order to commandeer a valuable lithium mine nearby. Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, X and SpaceX, posted that private relief flights to North Carolina were being blocked by the Federal Aviation Administration, a claim dismissed as false by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Despite the tradition of Democrats and Republicans putting aside politics for disaster response, many conspiracy theories suggest Democrats such as President Joe Biden or North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper are intentionally withholding aid from Republicans. Trump has pushed the claim, as has North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, the embattled GOP nominee for governor. “They’re being treated very badly in the Republican areas,” Trump told Fox News, ignoring reports and photo and video evidence of recovery efforts underway throughout the region. “They’re not getting water, they’re not getting anything.” Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones endorsed Trump’s fact-free allegation. Jones, the founder of InfoWars, popularized the idea that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut that killed 20 children in 2012 was faked. “Exclusive: Victims of Hurricane Helene Confirm The Federal Government is Purposely Blocking Rescuers and Stealing Aid In an Attempt to Keep Deep Red Areas From Voting,” Jones posted Thursday on X. State-run media and disinformation campaigns run by China and Russia have amplified false and misleading claims about the response to the storm. Both countries have used social media and state news stories to criticize responses to past U.S. natural disasters, part of a larger effort to stoke division and distrust among Americans. State and local officials from both parties have condemned the conspiracy theories as rumors, saying the focus should be on recovery, not political division and hearsay. Responding to the hoaxes is taking up time that should go toward assisting victims, said North Carolina state Sen. Kevin Corbin, a Republican who urged his constituents not to give into hoaxes. “Friends can I ask a small favor?” Corbin posted Thursday on Facebook. “Will you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet... Please don’t let these crazy stories consume you.” After Robinson, the GOP candidate for North Carolina governor, posted that state officials had not prepared for the storm, a spokesman for the governor accused Robinson of mounting “an online disinformation campaign.” North Carolina officials say the response to Helene is the largest in state history, including thousands of members of the National Guard and other recovery workers, millions of meals, dozens of aircraft and more than 1,000 chainsaws. Trump has tried to tie the hurricane’s aftermath to immigration, a leading issue of his campaign. He falsely claimed that FEMA had run out of money because all of it had gone to programs for undocumented immigrants. The agency’s funding for disaster aid is stretched, but that is because of the many parts of the country dealing with the effects of hurricanes, wildfires and other calamities. Disaster aid is funded separately from other Department of Homeland Security programs that support immigration-related spending. Bizarre stories proposing that the government used weather control technology to aim the hurricane at Republican voters quickly racked up millions of views on X and other platforms. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), endorsed the idea, posting Wednesday on X: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” Far-out tales of space lasers, fake snow and weather control technology — sometimes tinged with antisemitism — have spread after recent natural disasters, including a snowstorm in Texas and last year’s wildfire in Maui. Experts who study conspiracy theories say big events like disasters — or the Sept. 11 attacks or the COVID-19 pandemic — create perfect conditions for conspiracy theories to spread because large numbers of anxious people are eager to find explanations for shocking events. Responding to the volume of false claims about Helene, the Red Cross urged people to consult trustworthy sources of information and to think twice before reposting conspiracy theories. “Sharing rumors online without first vetting the source and verifying facts ultimately hurts people — people who have just lost their homes, neighborhoods, and, in some cases, loved ones,” the organization wrote in a public plea. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/05/misinformation-hurricane-helene-recovery-00182612
Next storm, just put Florida in charge as the first responder for the entire east coast. Gov't incompetence amounts to a soft civil war, just as is allowing voting without identification. After they steal the next election, states will need a strong independent governor more than ever.
Social media and Elitetrader.com have been around since the early 2000s. FEMA has been around long before that...since 1979 with the same problems in dealing with natural disasters much worse than Hurricane Helene regarding damage cost and lives lost. Natural disasters have occurred before in Presidential Election years too. Congress has been around much longer than all of the bullshit but has been recently much more ineffective in dealing with problems in the United States. We set a record in getting things done to help Americans than any other Congress in the past 40 years. Some blame it on political polarization dividing the country, but it is much deeper than that. Yet, we saw the seeds of this bullshit being planted during the Trump years or arguably during the Bush years when a certain group of people entered politics begin to learn how to use social media to spread their bullshit in attacking other Americans much more effectively than the newspapers. So what is different now? The difference now is that misinformation/disinformation is much more amplified. In addition, as I've stated a few times since the Pandemic... In the several years after the Pandemic, the world is not going to be on good behavior. Seriously, we have a lot more mentally unwell people using social media as a weapon whereas others are increasingly physically attacking and threatening others. There's no one person to blame, no one bad company to blame. There are just a lot more people mentally hurting after the Pandemic using the internet to unleash their bullshit. Anyways, I've talked about this before here at ET during the Pandemic and as I stated before...it should last another few more years after the Pandemic is no longer a global health crisis as many begin to learn to deal with the consequences of the Pandemic. Last of all, I like to keep track of the number of American citizens that leave the United States or make another country their primary residence without giving up their U.S. citizenship... Millions of Americans have moved from the United States and it's not because of the immigration issue in the U.S. Estimation between 6 to 9 million Americans are living abroad as expats who are eligible to vote in the 2024 U.S. Presidential elections. The World is out of whack including the United States with weaponized social media. wrbtrader
I meant that our Congress has recently set a record in NOT getting things done to help Americans than any other Congress in the past 40 years due to Congress being dysfunctional. The root cause of this dysfunction? The reluctance to vote, the holding of one issue hostage to another, the brinkmanship, the in-fighting within both political parties, and the refusal to compromise. All of this dysfunctional bullshit flows downhill into social media...contaminating America with misinformation/disinformation. wrbtrader
Donald Trump has delivered a barrage of lies and distortions about the federal response to Hurricane Helene,” CNN reports. “While various misinformation about the response has spread widely without Trump’s involvement, the Republican presidential nominee has been one of the country’s leading deceivers on the subject. Over a span of six days, in public comments and social media posts, Trump has used his powerful megaphone to endorse or invent false or unsubstantiated claims.”
They should make a campaign ad about what Trump has been doing (saying at rallies, tweeting on social media) about Hurricane Helene and the aftermath in comparison to what he was doing in the 2020 election year when eleven Hurricanes hit the United States. The difference is mindboggling and one could easily come to the conclusion Trump is now mentally unfit and so are some ET members that barely said shit if anything about the FEMA responses for the eleven Hurricanes that hit the United States in 2020 when Trump was President in comparison to today when Biden is President... There's an obvious misinformation/disinformation agenda for selfish political gain at the expense of Americans. Heck, recently J.D. Vance openly stated in an interview that he has the right to "create stories" (e.g. Haitians eating your pets) to draw attention to other issues as if he were giving America a heads-up of what's to come even if their story making results in hurting/threatening America's communities. He said that with a serious smile on his face as if there's nothing anyone can do to stop him or stop others like him. WTF??? In the meantime, there are other Hurricanes developing while I write this message post...Hurricane Kirk and Hurricane Milton...possibly Hurricane Leslie. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ Trump, Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson, and some ET members are going to be very busy online creating stories (misinformation/disinformation) instead of encouraging all those Republicans (every one of them that said NAY) to vote YEA for extra natural disaster relief funds for FEMA because the Hurricane threat is increasing... Their agenda of pointing the finger at others for political gain only hurts Americans as they continue refusing to vote YEA for extra natural disaster relief funds for FEMA after they voted YEA (Bipartisanship) to give Israel and Ukraine more funds to fight those Wars... To then only point the finger at the southern border immigration crisis. wrbtrader
Much of the disinformation is nothing more than Russian propaganda being repeated on the Internet. Thread Reader - https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1842629931647271270.html