In his mad scramble to stay relevant and at the top of the news cycle, Trump's disinformation about FEMA and Helene rescue efforts have put a large federal agency in extra urgency mode to combat the lies he is telling.

‘The worst I have ever seen’: Disinformation chaos hammers FEMA
Conspiracies and rumors are hurting recovery and relief efforts, warned FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.

They are having to double up FEMA field workers for their own safely, reducing the number of places the agency can go in any given day. Even if they split up and work opposite sides of the street, it reduces efficiency.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said the swirl of false conspiracy theories around Hurricane Helene is dissuading survivors from seeking help and hurting morale among responders.

“It is absolutely the worst I have ever seen,” Criswell told reporters on a Tuesday morning call.

“It’s creating distrust in the federal government, but also the state government, and we have so many first responders that have been working to go out and help these communities,” she added.

The agency has long had a rumor control page to combat the kind of scams that often flourish after a disaster, she added. “I anticipated some of this, but not to the extent that we’re seeing.”

Many of the falsehoods can be traced back to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his supporters, who have baselessly accused federal responders of diverting disaster money to immigrants.

Biden had a few words aimed directly at Trump:

“Those who do it, do it to try to damage the administration,” Biden said at a hurricane briefing at the White House. “We can take care of ourselves, but it misleads people, it puts people in circumstances where they panic, where they really, really, really worry and think ‘we’re not being taken care of.’ ... It’s un-American, it really is; people are scared to death, people know their lives are at stake.”

At this point, the Harris campaign is running an ad with quotes from the five governors involved, four of them Republican, all saying that FEMA and the Biden administration have been attentive and helpful, deploying a lot of resources.

Trump is a hot mess. That's all there is to it. His advisors should give him a sharp slap upside the head, but instead they tell him exactly what he wants to hear and let him continue to do damage.

The New York Times apparently has been lax in calling out Trump because the current publisher, one of the "nepo babies" in the business world, couldn't get the Biden or Harris interviews he wanted. I subscribe, but I'm getting closer and closer to dropping them. (I have two friends who have gift subscriptions based upon my account or I'd have dropped them already.)