Sickening Report Reveals How Trump Played Politics With Disaster Aid

Donald Trump’s attempt to politicize the devastation left by Hurricane Helene isn’t the first time he’s tried to exploit a natural disaster. While he was president, Trump was hesitant to send aid to areas where people voted against him, such as wildfire-stricken California, according to two former White House staffers.

E&E News spoke to Mark Harvey, Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council, who said that Trump didn’t want to send wildfire aid to California in 2018 because the state voted Democratic. But after Harvey showed him voting data from Orange County, California, showing more Trump supporters there than in all of Iowa, Trump changed his mind.

“We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” Harvey, who recently endorsed Kamala Harris along with other GOP national security figures, told E&E News.

Former White House Homeland Security adviser Oliva Troye concurred, saying that she would field calls from local politicians around the country asking for disaster relief because Trump refused to provide aid, leading her to frequently ask Vice President Mike Pence to pressure the president. She warned that Trump will play politics with disaster aid again if he returns to the White House.

“It’s not going to be about that American voter out there who isn’t even really paying attention to politics, and their house is gone, and the president of the United States is judging them for how they voted, and they didn’t even vote,” Troye said.

Trump eagerly sent aid to Florida in 2019 after Hurricane Michael hit the state’s Panhandle, according to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s autobiography, The Courage to Be Free. “They love me in the Panhandle,” Trump told DeSantis after he asked for federal assistance.

“I must have won 90 percent of the vote out there. Huge crowds. What do they need?” Trump asked, before directing FEMA to pay 100 percent of the state’s disaster costs. The emergency management agency ended up paying about $350 million more than it would have without Trump’s directive. In contrast, Trump only months earlier threatened to veto a bill in Congress that would have paid 100 percent of the disaster costs in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

Since Hurricane Helene hit the American Southeast, Trump has pushed conspiracy theories that Democrats are neglecting Republican areas hit hard by the storm, doubling down after being called out. Even Republican politicians, like Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, are pushing back against him. But as is often the case with Trump, every accusation is just a confession.

Ta-Nehisi Coates perfectly dismantled the Democratic Party’s blatant hypocrisy in denying requests for a Palestinian American speaker to address the Democratic National Convention in August.

During an interview Monday night with MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin at the Apollo Theater in New York, Coates criticized the Democratic Party for refusing to agree to requests from the Uncommitted Movement.

Coates took particular issue with the Democratic Party touting the names of activists like Fanny Lou Hamer and Shirley Chisolm but balking at demands for inclusivity.

“And then I’m like, right, but who’s not onstage?” Coates said, as the audience applauded. “Who’s been pushed out of the frame?”

“And I’m hearing all of this talk about, you know, ‘woman’s right to choose’ and protecting the autonomy of women’s bodies, and yet I see onstage some of the very people who have put that autonomy in question,” Coates said.

The DNC’s lineup had included several Republican lawmakers and politicians, including Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, conservative talk show host Ana Navarro, and former Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger. In general, Kamala Harris’s campaign has made significant efforts to attract GOP and independent voters, aligning with voices such as former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, a key architect of the Iraq War.

Harris is scheduled to appear with Cheney’s daughter, former Wyoming Republican Representative Liz Cheney, in Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party Thursday, as part of that outreach to GOP and independent voters.

Coates described what it was like to join delegates from the Uncommitted Movement, who began a sit-in outside the convention center after their requests to have a speaker were denied. The award-winning author said that when he saw members of the Central Park Five addressing the convention, it sparked a thought.

“What I know is that when they were going through their stuff, the Democratic Party wanted nothing to do with them,” Coates said of the five.

“They were dehumanized. They were pushed out of the frame,” he continued. “And I’m standing with people who have been pushed out the frame! You know what I mean? And I’m with people whose families are being bombed literally right now! Right now!”

Coates questioned how seriously one could take U.S. and Israeli promises of “Never Again,” while simultaneously funding and conducting a massive military operation in Gaza that has reportedly killed more than 41,500 Palestinians, including at least 16,500 children.

“We ought to hold folks accountable. Like I just, I don’t believe that you get to take Shirley Chisolm, I don’t believe you get to take Fanny Lou Hamer, and then bankroll those bombs to be dropped on people,” Coates said.

Hamer testified before the DNC credentials committee in 1964 to challenge the seating of Mississippi’s all-white delegation to the convention, and advocated for the racially integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to have access to the national stage.

“If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America,” Hamer told the credentials committee. “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks, because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”

Donald Trump won’t release even basic medical details about himself ahead of next month’s presidential election, leaving the public to wonder if he’s hiding anything.

Trump promised last month that he would “very gladly” release his medical records, noting that he recently had a medical exam. But when The New York Times asked him for a copy recently, a Trump spokesperson referred them to a one-page letter that his former physician sent to Congress in July, a week after his assassination attempt.

The letter only describes a bullet wound to Trump’s ear and its healing progress, and the spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions from the Times. It seems to fit a long-standing pattern from the former president, who also refused to release his medical records before the 2016 presidential election. At the time, he released a short letter from his personal doctor, Dr. Harold Bornstein, wildly claiming that Trump would be “the healthiest person ever elected to the presidency.”

Three years later, Bornstein would come out and say that Trump not only personally dictated the letter but also claimed that Trump’s ex-bodyguard raided his office and removed Trump’s medical records. This was followed by years of secrecy from Trump about his health.

In 2020, when Trump was diagnosed with Covid and was hospitalized, his doctors didn’t provide the public with many details about his condition, which was more serious than what was being disclosed. And even after the attempt on his life this July, Trump’s campaign didn’t hold a briefing on his health, make his doctors available to the press, or release his hospital records.

Since President Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is now the oldest candidate in the race, at 78, and if reelected, would be 82 years old by the time his term ends, the oldest president in U.S. history. Biden’s decision to leave the race was in part due to questions about his age and cognitive health, and there’s no shortage of concern regarding Trump’s mental state.

The few details that came out about Trump’s health were during his presidency, showing high cholesterol and obesity. He also bragged about acing a dementia test, though he got all the details of the test wrong in his recollection. Maybe that’s just the tip of the iceberg, and Trump has some worse details that he doesn’t want the public to know.

The less Trump discloses to the public, though, the more speculation takes place. If the former president doesn’t have anything to hide and his health is as excellent as he claims, he should embrace transparency and release detailed records, especially since he’s vying for the most powerful job in the world.

Residents of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, eviscerated a fascist right-wing YouTuber attempting to report on Donald Trump’s claims that the town had been overrun by Haitian immigrants. 

“You’re embarrassing your mother!” shouted one man during an on-the-street interview with Tyler Oliveria, a conservative influencer from California who travels the country producing right-wing propaganda for his 1.8 million subscribers.

Last month, Trump had named-dropped Charleroi during a campaign event, launching right-wing speculation that an influx of Haitian immigrants had caused the town to become “virtually bankrupt.” Despite testimony from local officials stating that many of the president’s claims about the town were blatantly untrue, Oliveria traveled to Pennsylvania to speak with residents about the president’s outlandish accusations. 

Suffice to say, his blatant trolling was met with some hostility. 

“You’re silly, look at you, drinkin’ Monsters. You got a girlfriend?” the man asked, eliciting the devastating response from Oliveria, “I like Monster!”

“Bet you don’t got a girlfriend! Call her right now!” the resident shouted as Oliveria laughed, clearly unable to respond. “Bet! Bet! BET! BET YOU DON’T GOT A GIRLFRIEND, BOY! Bet. On camera, you’re a clown!”

“Alright,” Oliveria said, shrugging, as the man walked away. As Oliveria sang circus music to himself, he became distracted as a woman walking down the street behind him began to shout.

“Oh, I need to go back to where I came from? Where?” Oliveria yelled back. “What did I do to you, what did I do to you? What’s the problem?”

“You don’t need to be in Charleroi about these poor Haitian people,” she continued. “Making money, and they work FUCKING hard.”

“There you go, that’s all we came here to understand. Why did you come in here assuming we came here to serve trouble?” Oliveria asked.

“This is my motherfucking town, bitch,” the woman shouted, walking away. “I run this fucking town!” 

Oliveria smiled uncomfortably. “She runs the town, alright. Well, good to know we met the mayor,” he said, turning back to the first resident. 

“Bro, you just need to understand, you’re going to mature,” said the first resident. “Just understand, understand the fact that what you’re doing, you should expect this to happen.”

“I can’t come here and have a conversation with you?” Oliveria asked.

“But keep your composure,” the resident warned.  

Oliveria previously made a video about traveling to Springfield, Ohio, where he interviewed locals about the debunked rumors pushed by the Republican ticket that Haitian immigrants were eating their neighbors’ pets. Oliveria’s video about Springfield was textbook right-wing propaganda, according to The Verge. 

The video included interviews with some wildly racist locals interspersed with misleading A.I.-generated images, footage of a woman who was arrested for allegedly eating a cat in Canton, Ohio, and footage of gang members in Haiti.

Republican vice presidential pick JD Vance might have successfully skirted explaining whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election during Tuesday night’s debate, but his answer eventually came to light.

While being chased down by comedian Jason Selvig, the MAGA politico admitted that he did believe the former president won the 2020 election. Still, Vance managed to avoid the immediate concern of the question: whether he would support a similar attempt to overturn the November election results if the Republican presidential nominee loses.

“If your opponent gets more votes, will you concede?” Selvig asked, to silence as Vance walked away, in a video posted Thursday.

Vance deflected the direct line of questioning Tuesday while on stage opposite Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. He brought up just about every hot-button topic under the sun—from inflation to Facebook’s content moderation policies—to avoid admitting whether he believed Trump won, and whether he would place his oath of office above his loyalty to the top of his ticket.

Vance still refused to yield, even during a heated back and forth with Walz, who noted that former Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to certify the election results was the reason why Vance was on the stage instead of the Indiana politician.

“Where is the firewall, if he knows he can do anything including taking an election, and his vice president’s not going to stand to it?” Walz asked on Tuesday. “That’s what we’re asking you, America. Will you keep your oath of office, even if the president doesn’t?

“So, America, I think you’ve got a really clear choice on who is gonna honor that democracy and who is gonna honor Donald Trump,” Walz said.