A defiant Lara Trump tore into CNN’s Dana Bash after the anchor accused her father-in-law of spreading ‘misinformation’ about money for hurricane victims being spent on migrants.
Donald Trump who visited the disaster zone in North Carolina on Friday slammed the $750 being offered in emergency relief for families who have lost their homes to Hurricane Helene.
And he claimed that millions of dollars in FEMA funding have been redirected to migrants illegally crossing the southern border, claims that Bash flatly told her guest were ‘untrue’.
But the RNC co-chair pointed out that just $750 is currently available to the thousands devastated by the Category 4 hurricane, and said money for migrants could be redirected ‘immediately’ to help survivors in her home state.
‘Why don’t they have anything in order?’ she demanded on Sunday. ‘Why is it that right now the citizens in western North Carolina are screaming for help, and it’s having to come from local citizens?’
RNC co-chair Lara Trump insisted that the millions spent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency on migrants would be better spent on hurricane survivors
CNN anchor Dana Bash demanded she condemn ‘misinformation’ spread by Donald Trump
More than 220 people are known to have died in America’s deadliest hurricane for nearly 20 years with the estimated damage running into hundreds of billions of dollars.
‘A lot of the money that was supposed to go to Georgia and supposed to go to North Carolina and all of the others is going and has gone already,’ Donald Trump told a rally in in Evans, Georgia, on Friday.
‘It’s been gone for people that came into the country illegally, and nobody has ever seen anything like that. That’s a shame.’
FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency – has spent more than $1.4 billion in the last two years on the migrant crisis.
And the Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas warned last week that it does not have enough funding to cope if another hurricane strikes.
‘We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,’ he noted. ‘We are expecting another hurricane hitting, FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.’
The Biden administration has said that the agency has enough money to cope with the current disaster and accused Donald Trump of ‘spreading poison’, insisting that no money has been diverted from hurricane survivors to migrants.
The estimated damage from Hurricane Helene runs into hundreds of billions of dollars.
But Tropical Storm Milton is brewing in the Caribbean and is forecast to become a major hurricane before hitting Florida in days.
‘They are out of money in terms of the hurricane relief,’ Lara Trump told Bash on CNN’s State of the Union program.
‘We have another hurricane heading towards Florida right now. But they have said that there is no money right now. Why don’t they have anything in order?
‘In North Carolina I hear every day from people on the ground there, and they are desperate for help. It is a dire situation there.
‘The idea that we’ve spent $650 million in Fiscal Year ’24 on the migrant crisis that Kamala Harris was responsible for stopping and by all accounts created by having an open-door policy at our southern border is infuriating.
‘We could redirect money to help people immediately on the ground in North Carolina.’
FEMA has pointed to displacement assistance, which will be available to cover temporary housing costs for those left homeless, home repair or replacement assistance, personal property assistance, medical assistance to cover the costs of disaster-related injuries, and funeral assistance for relatives of the dead.
House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted that FEMA funds had not been diverted from hurricane victims to migrants when he spoke to Fox News Sunday, admitting the funding streams are ‘different’.
‘But the problem is with the American people, see, and what they’re frustrated by, is that FEMA should be involved,’ he explained.
‘The Federal Emergency Management Agency, their mission is to help people in times like this of natural disaster. Not to be engaged in using any pool of funding from any account for resettling illegal aliens who have come across the border.
‘That’s what the Biden administration, Kamala Harris and Secretary Mayorkas have been engaged in.’
At least 200 people were killed in six states across the eastern seaboard in the wake of the powerful hurricane which made landfall as a Category 4
Bash told her guest that survivors may be deterred from seeking assistance they are entitled to if they think that little is available.
‘It is bad there,’ she agreed. ‘But my question is about the misinformation, particularly the notion that they are moving money to, you say, undocumented migrants, which FEMA says flatly is not true.
‘If people are not getting correct information and then they can’t go for assistance..’
‘You have migrants being housed in luxury hotels in New York City,’ Trump shot back.
‘We have paid so much money from our tax dollars into the crisis. That didn’t need to happen.’
