'Revealing for its dishonesty': NYT delivers blistering critique of Trump's hurricane lies

Donald Trump started lying minutes after touching down in Valdosta, Georgia, to survey damage from Hurricane Helene.

The former president wasted no time in lobbing false claims against president Joe Biden, telling reporters that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was "doing a very good job" but was "having a hard time getting the president on the phone" – which the governor and Biden have both insisted isn't true, reported the New York Times.

“He just said, Hey, what do you need?” Kemp said on Monday. “And I told him, you know, we got what we need. We’ll work through the federal process.”

Kemp added that Biden invited him to "call him directly" if there was anything his state needed to help recover from the devastation, and the Times compared that response to Trump's own response to natural disasters during his own presidency.

"The anecdote from Mr. Trump was revealing less for its dishonesty than for what it highlighted about his approach to federal disaster relief," the Times reported. "As president, he viewed federal aid through the prism of his personal politics, threatening to withhold money from governors of blue states whom he saw as enemies, and promising 'A-plus' treatment for his allies."

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The first Trump administration proposed cutting the budget the Federal Emergency Management Agency – as does the Project 2025 blueprint that could shape a second term if he's re-elected – and his top officials diverted resources away from disaster relief toward enforcing immigration laws.

"Former administration officials, who insisted on anonymity to speak candidly about private discussions from their time working for the former president, said he sometimes treated disaster funding the way he tried to treat other streams of money in his government: a pot of cash for him to dole out as he saw fit, depending on how he personally was treated," the Times reported.

"He also didn’t seem to understand — or want to understand — that some emergency funding was beyond his ability to curtail, according to one person with direct knowledge of the discussions," the newspaper added. "Another person with direct knowledge of the discussions said Mr. Trump wanted gracious requests from governors in order to help their states."

Trump infamously tossed paper towels at Puerto Rican residents after Hurricane Maria in September 2017 and threatened to withhold FEMA support from California as part of a public feud with Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom he referred to a "Newscum," although he tended to treat states he had carried in the election a bit more gently.

"When a tornado tore through Alabama in March 2019, he posted a message on Twitter promising the heavily pro-Trump state 'A Plus treatment' from the federal government," the Times reported.