Former President Donald Trump completely made up his accusation that President Joe Biden is robbing Federal Emergency Management Agency relief funds from Hurricane Helene ravaged areas, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote in a Four Pinocchios review of Trump's latest claims made at a Michigan rally Thursday.
And worse, Kessler wrote — Trump is actually accusing Biden of something he did himself as president in 2019.
“The Harris-Biden administration says they don’t have any money [for hurricane relief]," Trump said at the rally. "They spent it all on illegal migrants … 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."
None of that is true, wrote Kessler.
"Even though Trump was once president, he still appears to have little clue about the appropriations process," wrote Kessler. The truth, he wrote, is that while Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has asked Congress to shore up the Shelter and Services Program, hurricane relief is a separate fund — with thousands of pounds of supplies being delivered to affected areas.
Additionally, Biden did not take any money out of the other, unrelated program that is facing a shortfall, he wrote.
DHS issued a statement in response to Trump's speech, saying, “These claims are completely false. As Secretary Mayorkas said, FEMA has the necessary resources to meet the immediate needs associated with Hurricane Helene and other disasters."
But Trump shouldn't be so quick to raise this accusation, Kessler noted, because he did something like this himself when he was president.
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"In 2019, the Trump administration, in the middle of hurricane season, told Congress that it was taking $271 million from DHS programs, including $155 million from the disaster fund, to pay for immigration detention space and temporary hearing locations for asylum seekers who have been forced to wait in Mexico," he wrote.
In fact, this isn't even the first time Trump falsely accused Biden of mismanaging relief funds in a way his own administration did.
Trump recently claimed in another speech that Biden and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper are "going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas." He offered no evidence — but in fact, in 2019, Trump announced he would cut off all FEMA wildfire relief to California until the state started "raking" the forests better, and only reversed course when a Republican lawmaker pointed out to him that his own heavily pro-Trump district was in the California wildfire disaster zone.
