Trump Campaign’s Weird Hurricane Relief GoFundMe Raises Red Flags

Donald Trump’s campaign has begun raising money for hurricane relief—but it’s not exactly clear how that money will be used.

Two weeks ago, the Trump campaign created a GoFundMe “as an official response for MAGA supporters to offer their financial assistance to their fellow Americans impacted by Hurricane Helene,” according to the fundraiser website.

A few days after the page went live, it was updated with a list of the charities that would receive the MAGA funds.

Fitting with Trump’s smears against federal relief efforts, three of the four charities listed—Samaritan’s Purse, Water Mission, and Mtn2Sea Ministries—are Christian or Evangelical NGOs. The fourth charity listed is the “Clinch Foundation,” which is likely the Clinch Memorial Hospital’s Foundation in Valdosta, Georgia.

The page did not, however, say how the campaign planned to disburse funds from the Trump campaign’s pot—more than $7.7 million as of Monday. The fundraiser has received donations of $500,000 each from Republican megadonors Steve and Andrea Wynn and former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler.

While some of these charities have already received initial funds from the Trump campaign, it’s not clear how much has already been or will be disbursed.

Only Mtn2Sea Ministries has reported just how much it received, sharing that it got $25,000 from funds raised by Trump’s GoFundMe, in a Facebook post from the organization last week. “This is the only funds we expect to [receive] from this GoFundMe account and are very grateful for it to help us serve,” the post read.

So, where exactly is the other $7.65 million going? It’s still entirely unclear.

The GoFundMe’s latest update said simply, “We have made an initial disbursement and will continue providing more funds as support continues to come in.”

Late last month, when Samaritan’s Purse delivered supplies to Valdosta, Georgia, Trump promptly took credit for providing the “truckloads” of aid. In a less publicized moment of his speech, Trump revealed that the supplies had been provided by “Franklin’s incredible organization,” referring to Franklin Graham, the president of Samaritan’s Purse.

Samaritan’s Purse spokesperson Gabrielle Bouquet told the Associated Press that the organization was grateful for Trump’s “steadfast support of the work we do in Jesus’ name,” but she declined to say just how much the former president’s campaign fundraiser has contributed. Water Mission also confirmed that it had received funds but did not specify how much, according to the AP.

Trump previously used GoFundMe to raise money following his attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, in June. A spokesperson for GoFundMe told the AP that the majority of those funds had already been disbursed, mostly to the families of those injured and killed at the rally.

While Trump’s use of the crowdfunding site does not violate any campaign finance laws, it is unorthodox. “It’s pretty unusual and actually quite odd,” campaign finance attorney Brett Kappel told the AP.

Trump’s choice of subject is also strange, according to Kappel, who said political candidates often donate campaign funds to IRS-approved nonprofits.

Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said that the Republican presidential nominee wanted to “help find a way for his supporters to give as much direct support as they can.”

Meanwhile, Trump has claimed to have donated $25 million of his own money to hurricane relief, but there is currently no actual evidence he did, according to Snopes.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s editorial board endorsed Hawley’s Democratic challenger, Lucas Kunce, on Sunday, calling Hawley the “worst sitting senator in America right now.” The Missouri newspaper of record said that Hawley “stands apparent for his singular role in spurring the violence” on January 6, 2021, referring to the Capitol insurrection.

The editorial pointed out that Hawley was initially the only senator to challenge the 2020 presidential election results, and raised his fist in solidarity with the mob on January 6—only to run away with his fellow members of Congress when that mob breached the Capitol building.

Hawley’s actions on January 6 alone would “merit his expulsion from the Senate,” the editorial said, if not for his other stances: his attempt to halt aid to Ukraine, his lack of accomplishments in the Senate, and his “unparalleled record of demagoguery on the Senate floor, where he endlessly spews faux-populist sound and fury signifying nothing.”

The editorial went on to praise Kunce, an attorney and Marine veteran from a working-class family in Jefferson City, Missouri, noting his moderate political background and support for red-flag gun laws and universal background checks. Kunce has also worked with the Department of Defense negotiating arms control agreements involving Russia and NATO, in contrast to Hawley, who supports abandoning Ukraine in favor of Israel.

Then, on Monday, Hawley came under fire over a Missouri Independent story detailing his use of a private jet to campaign around Missouri, even though he attacked his 2018 opponent, Democrat Claire McCaskill, for doing the same. According to the report, he spent over $132,000 on chartered flights between mid-December and June.

“Missouri’s flyover country for this guy,” Kunce said on Saturday at a rally in Jefferson City, pointing that he instead was campaigning in a minivan with his wife and 16-month-old son.

A self-described Christian nationalist, Hawley seeks to push religious values as law alongside his wife, a lawyer for the extremist legal group Alliance Defending Freedom. Hawley has also mistaken a white nationalist magazine’s words for a Patrick Henry quote, scuttled bills simply to hurt President Biden, and written a bizarre book titled Manhood extolling the virtues of masculinity.

Does Kunce have a chance to unseat Hawley? Currently, the challenger is polling behind the incumbent senator, but now he has the state’s largest newspaper behind him. Kunce will need more than that if he expects to push out the national conservative firebrand in a few weeks.

Ted Cruz is hanging on by a thread in his Texas Senate race, according to internal polling from a GOP super PAC.

A memo from the Senate Leadership Fund obtained by Politico shows serious trouble for Cruz and several other Republicans in competitive Senate races this November. Indeed, the majority of the candidates listed are losing their races.

In his race against Democratic challenger Colin Allred, Cruz is up by only one point according to the super PAC. The document notes that Allred “has been heavily outspending” on television ads.

The Democratic former professional football player has run a noticeably different campaign from Beto O’Rouke’s in 2018, skipping surrogates and large barnstorms and opting for a more moderate approach. Despite running a more centrist campaign, Allred has been buoyed by Democrats’ exceptional fundraising. In the third quarter, Allred raised $30 million to Cruz’s $21 million across three different fundraising accounts. The Senate Leadership Fund noted that increasing GOP outside spending is perhaps the only way to keep Cruz’s lead for the Senate seat. The numbers are so bad that Cruz is often begging for donations in his media appearances.

The other major “trouble-spot” noted in the memo is Nebraska’s Senate seat, where incumbent Republican Senator Deb Fischer is being challenged by  independent candidate and former union president Dan Osborn. The polls are so inconclusive the super PAC said it needs to “assess whether intervention is necessary to protect the seat.”

The polling also shows Republicans majorly trail in swing states like Michigan and Ohio, as well as Maryland by as much as eight points, but the the super PAC still tried to delusionally spin that the “environment is ripe for a GOP win.”

Republican leaders want you to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears as they rewrite their narrative about the 2020 presidential election.

In the waning days leading into Election Day 2024, some of Trump’s closest allies are refusing to yield to the truth: that Trump lost the last election—a bad omen ahead of November.

On Sunday, ABC News’s Martha Raddatz pressed Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on why he wouldn’t admit that Trump didn’t win during the last election cycle.

“I’m just going to assume that if I asked you 50 times whether he lost the election, you would not acknowledge that he did. Is that correct?” Raddatz asked.

“Martha, you ask this question, I’ve been asked this question 10 times in the past couple of weeks. Of course Donald Trump and I believe there were problems in 2020, you haven’t asked about inflation—” Vance began.

“No, no, I’m sorry. Let’s stick to this. I know, I know—Why won’t you say that? Why won’t you say that?” Raddatz continued, attempting to hold Vance to the question as he bulldozed over her audio.

“Because Martha I believe that in 2020 when big tech firms were censoring American citizens, that created very serious problems,” Vance responded after some time. “By the way Martha, you’re a journalist, you represent the American media. Look at the polling on this. A lot of Americans feel like they were silenced in the run-up to the 2020 election. That is such a bigger issue.”

“If you—I just want to—but I don’t understand why you won’t just say that you believe it,” Raddatz interjected.

“Just say what? That I think the 2020 election had some problems? I’ve said that repeatedly,” Vance threw back.

“Did Donald Trump lose? That’s the question, and you know that’s the question,” Raddatz said.

“Martha, I’ve said repeatedly that I think the 2020 election had problems. You want to say rigged, you want to say he won, use whatever vocabulary term you want,” Vance said, returning to his talking point about Facebook’s alleged censorship. “The fact that you’re so obsessed with what word I used to describe this phenomenon rather than the phenomenon itself suggests something very broken in the American media.”

But Trump’s right-hand man isn’t the only MAGA ally to aggressively skirt a confession about the results of the 2020 election. Speaking with NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson couldn’t help but qualify his answer as to whether he would certify the results of the upcoming election, regardless of who wins.

“Regardless of who wins, you’ll certify the results?” asked Kristen Welker.

“Regardless? Of course, yes, if the election is free and fair and legal, and we pray and hope that it is, there’s a lot of work being done to make sure that’s true,” Johnson said. “I think this one’s going to be so large there’ll be no question. I think Donald J. Trump is your next president, and that can’t happen soon enough.”

When Welker pointed out that saying “if” the election is fair, as well as Trump’s continued lack of a concession over the 2020 vote, was likely to undermine voter confidence in the upcoming election, Johnson was quick to brush off her concerns.

“The point is the process works. We have the peaceful transfer of power. We did in 2020,” he said, conveniently ignoring the fact that an armed and violent mob stormed the Capitol to try to prevent that transfer of power.

Donald Trump’s baseless attacks against federal relief efforts for Hurricane Helene came to life over the weekend, when officials in North Carolina reported encountering truckloads of militia members “out hunting FEMA.”

An official with the U.S. Forest Service, which is assisting in relief efforts in North Carolina, sent several federal agencies an urgent warning Saturday afternoon, according to The Washington Post.

“FEMA has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately,” the official said.

FEMA’s message warned that National Guard troops “had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA.”

The Forest Service official told the Post that responders had been relocated to a “safe area” but that the incident had paused efforts to clear roads of debris, deliver supplies, and aid in search and rescue operations.

This incident follows weeks of toxic misinformation about federal assistance amplified by Trump and other MAGA Republicans. The Republican presidential nominee has repeatedly criticized federal relief efforts, and falsely claimed that $1 billion was redirected away from FEMA to help undocumented immigrants.

This incident also comes shortly after MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene boosted an antisemitic conspiracy theory positing that the government controls the weather, which then was echoed in slews of antisemitic attacks against FEMA’s Director Jaclyn Rothenberg.

On Friday, Trump took to Truth Social to claim that North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and other Democratic leaders “were blocking people and money from coming into North Carolina to help people in desperate need.”

Cooper slammed Trump’s claim, calling it a “flat out lie.”

“We’re working with all partners around the clock to get help to people. Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories have hurt the morale of first responders and people who lost everything, helped scam artists and put government and rescue workers in danger,” Cooper wrote in a post on X.

It seems Trump’s words have the potential to hurt more than morale, as residents are now reportedly taking up arms against relief workers. In the end, Trump’s own conspiracies are preventing the swift recovery of the region, which, ironically, is mostly home to his own supporters.