FEMA
Liz Wolfe | 10.8.2024 9:30 AM
Is FEMA withholding aid to victims? Over the last few days, Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump has claimed in campaign rallies that the current administration is intentionally withholding aid to victims of Hurricane Helene, which destroyed vast swaths of the Gulf as well as eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.
"The Harris-Biden administration says they don't have any money [for hurricane relief].…They spent it all on illegal migrants," Trump added. "They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them." He also implied that the current administration is withholding money from red states.
The former president alleged that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had run out of money because so much of the funding had gone toward the needs of illegal immigrants who had recently crossed into this country. He also drew a contrast between the money offered to people whose homes had been destroyed and the amount of federal funding given to people in humanitarian crises abroad.
"They're offering them $750 to people whose homes have been washed away," Trump said Saturday at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. "And yet we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of. They're offering them $750. They've been destroyed. These people have been destroyed."
"FEMA has run out of money for the rest of hurricane season because Kamala Harris used the funds for free giveaways to illegal immigrants," Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign's press secretary, told Newsweek, sticking with the Trump line. "This is inexcusable and yet another example of Kamala Harris putting Americans LAST!"
"There's a lot of mis- and disinformation being pushed out there by the former president about what is available, particularly to the survivors of Helene," said Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic contender for president, to reporters yesterday. "It's extraordinarily irresponsible. It's about him. It's not........