MAGA's Hurricane Helene Lies Are A Trial Run For The Election
The through-line is sowing chaos and hurting people for personal gain.
When Donald Trump started telling conspicuous lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene, all of MAGA understood the assignment.
His supporters understood they should spread rumors or fabricate anecdotes consistent with Trump’s claims. They should portray their own confusion as government malice or incompetence. They should claim to have witnessed FEMA abandoning Republican-heavy regions and illegal immigrants walking away with relief money first hand. They should even use artificial intelligence technology to fabricate images that reinforce these lies.
Elon Musk and Trump’s other ultra-wealthy supporters understood it as their solemn duty to draw as much attention to these lies as possible.
Anyone who sought information about the recovery on social media has been bombarded with them for over a week now; Musk’s Twitter is a particularly prolific font of disinformation, because he spends all day plucking rumor, lies, and innuendo from the stream and retweeting them to is 200 million followers. He takes special care to algorithmically boost this content of his, even to people who aren’t regular Twitter users, and who don’t follow his account.
The consequences of this homegrown propaganda campaign have been infuriating. It’s placed FEMA workers in the crosshairs of Trump’s mob, and deprived innocent flood victims of timely assistance, as government officials triage resources to respond to reported emergencies that turn out to be hoaxes.
This is, of course, precisely what Trump and his loyalists like Musk hoped to achieve. But for them, it’s more than just a passing confluence of interests and capabilities.