On Sunday, Ohio Senator JD Vance doubled down on defending his running mate former President Donald Trump‘s false claims about the federal response to Hurricane Helene.
After Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane late last month, leaving a trail of destruction along the southeastern United States, Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, began spreading falsehoods about recovery efforts by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
While appearing on ABC News’ This Week on Sunday morning, the network’s chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz confronted Vance about the claims.
“During Hurricane Helene, as we heard, former President Trump suggested the federal government was not only sending FEMA aid meant for the hurricane to migrants but ‘going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.’ Do you think that is true?” she asked.
During a campaign rally in Michigan on October 3, Trump said that his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, “spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants, many of whom should not be in our country.”
The former president also wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, on September 30 that he didn’t “like the reports that I’m getting about the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of the State, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas,” referring to North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper.
In response, FEMA had to make a webpage dedicated to debunking the false claims. On its webpage, the agency writes, “No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts.”
The agency also wrote that it “provides assistance to survivors regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, English proficiency or economic status.”
In response to Raddatz’s question, Vance said, “What the [former] president said is that fundamentally FEMA aid is distracted by going to illegal migrants…we’ve got Republican congressmen who are on the ground who represent that area, saying that they have to call the White House to get food and water to [sic] FEMA.”
He added: “I don’t frankly think there’s anything malicious going on here Martha, but I do think that we’ve had an incompetent response to this particular crisis, particularly in Western North Carolina, which to be fair was hit harder than a lot of us expected it…”
GOP Ohio Senator JD Vance is seen on October 1 in New York City. Vance doubled down on defending his running mate former President Donald Trump’s false claims about the federal response to Hurricane Helene.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Raddatz later interjected and said, “I want to go back to what former President Trump said. He said, they’re ‘going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.’ There is no truth to that.”
She added: “Pentagon officials say that active duty troops were staged and ready to go before being called upon and were instantly out the door. So former President Trump is saying things that aren’t true about that money being withheld from Republican areas.”
“I think you’re actually confusing staging of resources from the rapid response of the U.S. military,” Vance responded. “And I think all the [former] president has said is frankly, what some of Kamala Harris’ surrogates have said, which is that if these areas were a little bit more Democratic, maybe Kamala Harris would have focused on them more. That acknowledgment is not to attack, frankly, the good folks of FEMA, it’s to suggest that Americans are feeling left behind by their government, which they are Martha…”
Newsweek reached out to Harris’ and Trump’s campaigns as well as Vance’s office via email for comment late Sunday afternoon.
Last Monday Harris criticized Trump to reporters for pushing “disinformation” about “what is available, in particular to the survivors of Helene” from FEMA.
“It’s extraordinarily irresponsible. It’s about him; it’s not about you,” Harris said. “And the reality is that FEMA has so many resources that are available to folks who desperately need them now and resources that are about helping people get back on their feet and rebuild and have places to go.”
Hurricane Helene has caused over 250 deaths across the Southeast, with 123 deaths in North Carolina, according to Fox Weather. Meanwhile, the American Red Cross has received over 9,000 reunification requests from people searching for their loved ones, according to The Washington Post.
