Former President Donald Trump visited in North Carolina on Monday for a series of events in the key swing state he’s won narrowly twice before.
In his fight to keep the state in his column, Trump continued spreading falsehoods about the federal government's response to Hurricane Helene, charging that the Federal Emergency Management Agency ran out of money for North Carolinians because they spent it on undocumented immigrants — claims that have been thoroughly disproven by officials across the political spectrum.
The first stop of the day was a press conference in Swannanoa, N.C., alongside political allies and local business owners affected by last month’s storm, the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland United States since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. While Trump had kind words to say for the business owners and the region, he spread falsehoods about the emergency response despite the pleas of the state’s governor and top federal officials that such misinformation puts aid efforts and local residents at risk.
Trump baselessly claimed, as he has with frequency in recent weeks, that FEMA funds for hurricane relief efforts were instead being used for “bringing illegal migrants, people that came into our country illegally, and taking them in.” He also boosted the falsehood that “maybe” FEMA was spending aid dollars on bringing migrants in “so they could vote in the election because… a lot of people are saying that’s why they’re doing it.”
Beyond the fact that non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections – and virtually all state and local elections in the United States – and incidents of illegal non-citizen voting are incredibly rare, officials have said that FEMA’s disaster relief fund is not being used in any way to house or bring undocumented immigrants into the country.
That claim has no evidence to support it and has been denied by FEMA, Custom and Border Patrol’s top official, the Department of Homeland Security, the White House and North Carolina Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican who stood behind Trump at the press conference and spoke briefly.
“FEMA has NOT diverted disaster response funding to the border or foreign aid,” Edwards wrote in an Oct. 8 release. “FEMA’s non-disaster related presence at the border has always been of major concern to me, even before Hurricane Helene, and I will continue to condemn their deployment of personnel to the southern border, but we must separate the two issues.”
FEMA has a resource page addressing many of the false claims and rumors being spread on the internet and by Trump and his allies, but independent organizations and news reports have also undercut the former president’s persistent falsehoods.
When asked by a reporter about recent incidents of gunmen harassing aid workers in Tennessee and North Carolina, Trump expressed little concern about the threats that derailed FEMA’s relief efforts last week.
“Well, I think you have to let people know how they're doing. If they were doing a great job, I think we should say that too, because I think they should be rewarded. But if they're not doing — does that mean that if they're doing a poor job, we're supposed to not say it?” Trump said, before repeating his false claims about FEMA funds running dry and being used on migrants. “I think you have to be able to speak. Does that mean let's not talk about it? Because by doing that, they'll do a better job the next time. It's very important.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign slammed Trump for declining to condemn the violent threats to aid workers and spreading “lies and misinformation.”
“As he keeps calling his fellow Americans ‘the enemy within,’ Donald Trump is now defending armed threats against aid workers getting relief to Americans in need. Think about that: In exploiting people’s pain for political purposes, Trump is giving the wink-and-nod to violence against selfless heroes working to help people make it through the worst time of their lives,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement. “Yet again, we’re seeing how Trump’s increasingly unhinged and unstable behavior is putting Americans at risk.”
North Carolina’s Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said on Monday that Trump’s “deliberate disinformation and misinformation” hurts recovery workers and those in need of assistance, saying it “needs to stop.” Before Trump spoke, he pleaded with the Republican presidential nominee to put partisanship aside when it comes to relief efforts and stop spreading falsehoods that confuse and mislead North Carolinians in need.
“It discourages and makes people fearful of signing up for help, it enables scam artists and it hurts the morale of government officials, first responders and soldiers who are on the ground trying to help,” Cooper said, speaking at a press briefing alongside FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and other officials.
“I’m asking that [Trump] not spread lies or misinformation while he is there,” Cooper continued. “Many survivors of this storm lost everything. They want help and they want the truth. We should work together to give them both. Storm recovery cannot be partisan.”
Instead, Trump slammed FEMA, Cooper and the Biden administration, saying that he is “not hearing” that Cooper’s “done a very good job” and that FEMA has “done a very poor job.” He went on to falsely state that FEMA’s disaster relief funds are “all gone” and that the agency “spent it on illegal migrants” — baselessly claiming “many” of whom were murderers, drug dealers and terrorists — so that “they don’t have money to take care of people from North Carolina and other states.”
FEMA has the funds to continue its relief efforts in the immediate future after Hurricanes Helene and Milton, President Joe Biden and other federal officials have said. But there’s a bipartisan effort underway to have Congress return to Washington next month to allocate billions more dollars to FEMA and the Small Business Administration, which ran out of funds for its small business disaster loan program last week.
The SBA said in a statement that individuals and small businesses eligible for its loan programs should continue to apply “given assurances from congressional leaders that additional funding will be provided upon Congress’s return in November.”
The Trump and Harris campaigns are ramping up their activity in North Carolina again after the storm. Trump had three North Carolina stops scheduled for Monday. Former President Bill Clinton appeared last week with Harris' running mate, Tim Walz, and followed with several additional stops in eastern North Carolina.
“We are going to win or lose the presidency based on what happens in North Carolina,” Republican National Chairman Michael Whatley, who formerly chaired the North Carolina GOP, said last week as part of a bus tour.
Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes have received more attention from Harris and Trump than other battlegrounds. But North Carolina and Georgia are the next largest swing states, with 16 electoral votes each. While Georgia yielded Democrat Joe Biden’s closest victory margin four years ago, it was North Carolina that delivered Trump’s narrowest win: less than 75,000 votes and 1.3 percentage points.
North Carolina is expected to cast as many as 5.5 million ballots, with more than 1 million votes already cast since the start of early voting last Thursday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.