Watch: Biden Slams GOP’s “Onslaught of Lies” as Hurricane Milton Nears

President Biden on Wednesday called out the “onslaught of lies” from the right regarding relief efforts over Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, particularly from Donald Trump and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“Assertions have been made that property was being confiscated. That’s simply not true. They’re saying people impacted by these storms will receive $750 in cash and no more. That’s simply not true. They’re saying the money needed for this crisis is being diverted to migrants. What a ridiculous thing to say; it’s not true,” an outraged Biden said in a briefing from the White House.

Biden also addressed Greene’s wild claim that the federal government controls the weather and is sending hurricanes to Republican areas, calling it “beyond ridiculous,” and urging Republicans to put politics aside for relief efforts.

“It’s got to stop. In moments like this, there are no red or blue states. There’s one United States of America, where neighbors are helping neighbors,” Biden said. “Volunteers and first responders are risking everything, including their own lives, to help their fellow Americans.”

Later in the briefing, Biden thanked the Republican governors who have addressed disinformation about hurricane relief efforts, and further expressed his incredulity over the wild conspiracies.

“This stuff is off the wall. It’s like out of a comic book,” Biden said.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Milton is predicted to cause immense damage when it makes landfall in Florida, shaking the composure of even one of the state’s most experienced meteorologists. While some Republican politicians are dismissing the conspiracies and trying to do their jobs, others are demanding federal aid that they voted against or are missing in action. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis doesn’t even see the point in speaking to Kamala Harris, even as the vice president pledges to protect hurricane victims from illegal fraud and price gouging.

As a whole, Republicans still are refusing to acknowledge the role of climate change in the increased frequency and severity of these storms, and their attempt to politicize them hurts their constituents. Perhaps these hurricanes need to be politicized in a different way to make sure that people are actually helped instead of being used by their leaders.

As Election Day looms, Donald Trump is finalizing his speaking schedule for the next several weeks. One surprising stop, according to sources familiar with the Republican candidate’s schedule, is a hometown visit to New York City.

The New York Post first reported that Trump will hold a rally at Madison Square Garden later this month. New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who represents the district, confirmed that the event will be held October 27 at 3 p.m.

In a solidly blue New York City, one might ask why Trump is bothering to campaign so close to the election in the city at all.

Online critics were quick to point out that the event bears a striking resemblance to a Nazi rally that took place in Madison Square Garden in 1939 during the reign of Adolf Hitler. At the time, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was criticized for allowing the event to take place, but it proceeded anyway. Many also questioned the motivations of a Trump rally in a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican candidate for president since Ronald Reagan.

Hoylman-Sigal called the rally a “disastrous decision” by the venue “that will endanger the public safety of New Yorkers and has the potential to incite widespread violence.” Like many, he also called upon Madison Square Garden to cancel the event.

Donald Trump’s underlying reasons for supporting the state of Israel might have something to do with lining his own pockets.

The Trump Organization is reportedly looking to reopen talks about a lucrative hotel deal in Jerusalem, a discussion that began in earnest before the October 7 attack last year, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The organization was in talks to build a luxury property on the former site of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to sources and documents reviewed by the Times.

But that’s not the only Trumpian real estate project in the works in Israel. In Tel Aviv, the Trump Organization eyed a rising skyscraper as a possible location for another Trump-branded hotel, a project that would create the most hotel rooms in a single building just steps away from the headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces.

“The deal absolutely would have gotten done if not for Oct. 7,” Eric Trump, who oversaw the deal, told the Times, adding that the real estate group would “definitely” finalize a deal with the country “when the current situation that we’re all witnessing on TV every day is resolved.”

Trump has been anything but shy about his unequivocal support for Israel. One of his biggest donors—and the recipient of one of Trump’s Presidential Medals of Freedom—Miriam Adelson, is also the richest Israeli in the world, and has worked for years to influence and lobby U.S. politicians to make decisions that benefit the Israeli state.

Speaking earlier this week with New York radio show Sid & Friends, Trump claimed that “nobody’s done more for the Jewish people than I have.” And in an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Trump insisted that the state of Israel—not necessarily Jewish Americans—needed to “get smart” about supporting his candidacy while speculating about the potential “waterfront property” real estate development possibilities in Gaza.

“I think that Israel has to do one thing,” Trump said. “They have to get smart about Trump, because they don’t back me. I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not reciprocal.”

The Democratic ticket is working overtime to bury Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s hot take on the Electoral College.

On Tuesday, the number two on the Democratic presidential ticket told a group of donors in Sacramento, California, that he no longer supported the Electoral College’s continued existence.

“I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a national popular vote,” Walz said to applause. “But that’s not the world we live in.”

“So we need to win Beaver County, Pennsylvania,” Walz continued. “We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win. And the help that you give here today helps make that happen.”

But by Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign was already working to distance her from Walz’s perspective, telling USA Today that ridding the nation of the Electoral College is not an official position.

The controversial institution has been a matter of contention in the United States since its inception at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Critics have argued that the system—which almost singularly determines the outcome of presidential elections regardless of the popular vote—is wholly undemocratic, while offering outsize national influence to smaller, less densely populated, traditionally conservative regions of the country.

There have been at least two episodes in the last couple of decades in which Democratic candidates won the national popular vote but failed to win the White House due to the Electoral College: Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“Governor Walz believes that every vote matters in the Electoral College and he is honored to be traveling the country and battleground states working to earn support for the Harris-Walz ticket,” a Harris campaign spokesperson said in a statement to USA Today. “He was commenting to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign is built to win 270 electoral votes. And, he was thanking them for their support that is helping fund those efforts.”

Donald Trump absolutely flailed during an appearance on a podcast where the hosts openly mocked the former president for his bullshit answers.

During an hour-and-a-half-long interview on Flagrant, a comedy podcast hosted by stand-up comedians Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh, Trump spoke so incoherently that the hosts started to laugh at the Republican presidential nominee.

At one point, Singh asked Trump to speculate about who was responsible for his assassination attempt. As Trump embarked on his nonanswer, he became so blatantly incoherent he had to outright explain his own disjointed speech.

“You know, I do a thing called the weave,” Trump started to explain. “And there are those that are there fair that say, ‘This guy is so genius,’ and then others would say, ‘Oh he rambled.’ I don’t ramble.”

Trump claimed he actually needed an “extraordinary memory” to get so off topic.

“They don’t give you credit for that,” Schulz said, laughing, “that you can go all the way over here, and then get back.”

“I can go so far here, or there,” Trump said. “And I can come back to exactly where I started.”

As the interviewers cackled, it became clear that Trump—as ridiculous as his answers were—was being entirely serious about how impressive his “weaving” was.

Trump continued to explain the weave by repeating exactly what he had already said: “And some people think it’s so genius, but the bad people, what they say is, ‘You know, he was rambling.’”

“Yeah, you really weaved your way out of answering my question. Twice, ” Singh noted.

Later in the interview, Trump spoke so incoherently that the hosts started to openly laugh at the Republican presidential nominee’s “weave.”

“Dwight Eisenhower was sort of a moderate, General Eisenhower. Did you know that they had 8 percent generals president of the United States? Eight percent were generals, 92 percent were politicians, and then you had Trump,” Trump said. “You see, that’s a weave.”

As Trump tried to explain why he had even started to talk about Eisenhower, the hosts snickered, and Trump seemed to grow more and more confused.

“You gotta be sharp,” Trump said. “If you’re not sharp you’re dead.”

At another point, Schulz just couldn’t hold it together when Trump called himself “basically a truthful person.”

Trump’s disastrous appearance comes as his team launches criticism at Kamala Harris, attacking the vice president for appearing on a (far more popular) podcast in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.