FEMA administrator slams false Helene recovery claims from Trump, Musk

Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Deanne Criswell on Sunday criticized former President Donald Trump for spreading false information about how the Biden administration allocated disaster relief funding for Hurricane Helene recovery.

“It’s frankly ridiculous and just plain false,” Criswell said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people. It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people.”

As hurricane season ramps up, Trump falsely claimed last week that FEMA was running out of money to aid its disaster relief efforts, because the White House had used the funds “on illegal migrants coming into the country.”

FEMA and other agencies have since fact-checked that disinformation.

On FEMA’s “Rumor Response” webpage, the agency specifically addressed the claim that FEMA disaster relief funding “was diverted to support international efforts or border related issues.”

“This is false. No money is being diverted from disaster response needs,” the agency wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security and White House have issued their own statements fact-checking and condemning the false claims.

But the Trump campaign and the former president’s allies, such as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, have continued to boost disinformation about the Helene recovery effort, working to turn the devastating hurricane into a campaign attack against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Criswell on Sunday called that rhetoric “demoralizing to all of the first responders that have been out there in their communities helping people.”

Though FEMA has been working with a tight budget over the past year, the agency received a roughly $20 billion cash infusion from the stopgap funding bill that Congress passed to avert a government shutdown, which went into effect last Tuesday.

White House officials and representatives from areas hit by Helene have said that Congress will likely need to pass a supplemental disaster relief package to further aid FEMA’s rebuilding effort.