North Carolina’s second-largest newspaper condemns Trump for ‘ridiculous’ Helene response ‘falsehoods’

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Donald Trump is now facing condemnation from the editorial board of North Carolina’s second-largest newspaper as he continues to take criticism for politicizing the response to Hurricane Helene across the US southeast.

Trump was in Georgia last week to survey hurricane damage alongside the state’s governor, Brian Kemp — a one-time foe who has returned to the Trumpworld fold, like many Republicans, seeking political cover.

On Monday, he attacked Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration in a Truth Social post for supposedly “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas”, a false charge. A Republican lawmaker representing three counties in hard-hit western North Carolina — which is largely rural, and politically trends conservative — has called it a “junk” conspiracy.

He’d go further in an interview with Kellyanne Conway, one of his most ardent truth-twisters on cable TV before she was largely exiled from the networks, accusing Harris of trying to “hurt” western North Carolina residents.

On Saturday, Trump’s claims provoked a response from one of the state’s most widely-read newspapers, the Charlotte Observer. The Observer’s editorial board slammed the ex-president for his lies about the federal response to Helene, which is believed to have killed more than 100 across the state.

“This is not a situation to capitalize on for political gain. But former President Donald Trump has politicized the situation at every turn, spreading falsehoods and conspiracies that fracture the community instead of bringing it together,” read the newspaper’s editorial.

“There’s no evidence to support any of those ridiculous claims. And by every indication, state and federal agencies have been working to help people in need,” it continued.

Adding that the hurricane-ravaged areas of the state were not a “political football” for the Trump campaign, the Observer also swiped at the state’s Trump-endorsed lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, for spreading the conspiracies. Robinson’s reasoning for doing so is clear: he’s at the center of the complete implosion of his campaign over a shocking CNN investigation which found that a screen name and email address linked to the sitting lieutenant governor was linked to a wide array of disgusting and vile comments on a porn site.

Harris herself was in the state on Saturday and visited Asheville — a city hit by substantial flooding during the storm.

“We're here for the long haul,” she told a volunteer leader.

Robinson also received special mention in the piece for his failure to show up for a key vote to declare a state of emergency, part of his role as lieutenant governor, while he continued to campaign for the governorship. The vote still passed without his participation.

Hundreds are believed dead after Helene caused massive flooding and triggered landslides that wiped out bridges and homes. It’s now the second-deadliest hurricane to strike the US in more than a half-century.

Federal aid approved for Helene survivors has already passed $45m, and that number may continue to rise. FEMA’s website indicates that the disaster relief agency has already distributed more than 1.5m meals and more than 12.6m liters of drinking water as part of aid efforts. President Joe Biden further announced the deployment of 500 National Guard members equipped with “advanced technological assets” to western North Carolina.

The agency has even been forced to put out a separate webpage to counter misinformation and conspiracies surrounding Hurricane Helene relief, including charges from right-wing social media accounts claiming that aid is being distributed on the basis of ethnicity.

Thom Tillis, the state’s senior member in the US Senate, addressed the ex-president’s fake claims on Sunday.

"We can have a discussion about the failure of this administration's border policies and the billions of dollars it's costing, but right now — not yet — is it affecting the flow of resources to western North Carolina,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation.