Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s visit to Hurricane-ravaged areas of North Carolina has left a bitter taste in residents’ mouths, according to posts on social media.
Asheville locals recently resorted to expressing their distress online regarding Trump shutting down and blocking multiple roads in the western North Carolina city on Monday, Oct. 21, as they feel at a loss while trying to recover from major damage caused by Hurricane Helene last month.
“Here is what happens when a heartless narcissist is more interested in a photo op than a region needs,” a resident stressed in a post they shared on Reddit.
The post included an image from inside a vehicle showing an extremely backed-up highway in front of the driver with countless cars sitting bumper to bumper. Trump held a news conference about 10 miles east of Asheville in Swannanoa.
“It took me 3 hours to go to an appointment and get back home. We also needed to do a supply run but had to wait for all the traffic to die down,” a resident admitted in the comments of the post. ‘So chaotic.”
Tens of thousands of residents in and around the city have still been without running water weeks after Hurricane Helene, leading locals to keep buckets of water from creeks and rain separated for different crucial purposes. Helene landed as a Category 4 hurricane along Florida’s Gulf Coast in late September. Although it was more than 400 miles from Asheville, heavy rain from the storm led to flooding and washing out of homes and businesses in the area.
Residents were without water for weeks but are now under a boiled water mandate, while 5,000 remain without electricity, according to reports.
“I’m stuck on the highway trying to get water, and I’ve never hated him more,” a Reddit user slammed.
A person complained on Reddit that their wife couldn’t even get necessary medications, in addition to attempting to get usable water, because of Trump’s touch-down into the city for his political rally unrelated to the distress the residents are enduring.
“Now she’s at a standstill on gridlock,” the resident added. “Absolutely infuriating.”
Residents noted that Southside Henderson Road in the town had been backed up “all the way from exit 44 to the Fletcher Ingles,” for instance.
North Carolina State Rep. Caleb Rudow even made a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, noting how Trump carelessly came into a “disaster zone” to host a political rally at Harrah’s Cherokee Center in Downtown Asheville in August.
“His selfishness and his motorcade slowed down meals being delivered, the recovery, and people trying to get to work,” Rudow stated.
“Then he hosted a press conference in which he spread lies about FEMA. This is a new low,” referring to Trump’s actions this week.
Data analysis expert Chris Swart called Trump out over concerning answers he provided to the press in Asheville when questioned about serious threats of violence against Federal Emergency Management Agency employees, with complaints, as the agency continues to juggle claims made by Americans suffering from the effects of recent natural disasters.
The presidential candidate people are “entitled” to complain if FEMA is “doing a bad job.”
“Classic Trump, justifying threats against FEMA workers because apparently, that’s what counts as leadership now—turning a natural disaster relief effort into a trigger-happy free-for-all,” Swart said in response to a video of Trump speaking on the recent arrest of an armed man charged with threatening FEMA workers in North Carolina which was shared by VP Kamala Harris’ campaign account KamalaHQ.
“‘We’re entitled to say it’? Really? That’s the defense? Next, he’ll be telling us hurricanes are ‘fake news’ and FEMA’s secretly stealing all the “beautiful” sand from his imaginary beach days.”
Asheville residents expressed that, amid all the destruction of the area, Trump “lied some more about FEMA” despite the agency doing what it can to assist those in need.
“I’ll repeat: It took FEMA less than 10 days to take her application, assess damage, and deposit their maximum grant into her bank account.” someone said on X about their daughter receiving help after her home was “flooded out” in a nearby North Carolina city due to the storm.“FEMA was great!”
The threats arise due to rumors and what Jeff Howell, emergency management coordinator for Yancey County, a county hit hard by Hurricane Helene, deems conspiracy theories.
“I don’t even know how they make it up,” he confessed in an interview with 60 Minutes.
“Stories about FEMA seizing trailers and draining tankers and we’re going, ‘That’s just not really happening,’”
He added that the misinformation takes the emergency workers’ focus away from the crisis control work they’re supposed to be doing.
“When they’re having to debunk this sort of stuff and explain to people, now, the U.S. Government did not geo-engineer this storm,” Howell said.
Asheville is still recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene dumping more than 30 inches of rain in some parts of North Carolina, leading to historic flooding that killed more than 42 people in the mountainous region, per The New York Times. Trump, unfortunately, came in during their time of need, not for the residents but with the goal of building his own political gain.
The disastrous mudslides and floods that swept away families and children in the foothills and mountains of North Carolina were a substantial risk few expected to be imminent, Northeastern University professors Auroop Ganguly and Samuel Munoz said at the beginning of the month.
While speaking in North Carolina, CNN reported that the Republican presidential nominee kept repeating a false claim that was widely debunked when he made it earlier in October.
Trump stood amongst a healing community and declared that FEMA took money that was supposed to go to disaster relief and spent it on migrants who entered the country illegally.
He posed the question: “Why did they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something that they were not supposed to be spending it on?”
Trump went on to answer himself with misinformation, which he admitted he has only heard from others, with no support.
“They were not supposed to be spending the money on taking in illegal migrants,” he said.
“Maybe so they could vote in the election, because that – a lot of people are saying that’s why they’re doing it. I don’t know, I hope that’s not why they’re doing it.”
What’s true is that Congress allotted $650 million in the 2024 fiscal year to fund a program that helps state and local governments house migrants, but that money is entirely separate from FEMA’s much larger pot of disaster relief funds, according to CNN.
They’re just two unconnected things that are funded separately by Congress, which the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, and some congressional Republicans clarified earlier this month.
Additionally, Congress devoted more than $35 billion in disaster relief funds for fiscal 2024, according to official FEMA statistics.
