WASHINGTON — President Biden mistakenly said Thursday that hurricane relief workers “received death penalties” as the result of misinformation — when he meant to say death threats.
The retiring 81-year-old president made the error twice when speaking for the first time about the impact of Hurricane Milton striking Florida overnight.
“Our fellow Americans are putting their lives on the line to do this dangerous work and receive death penalties — some received death penalties yesterday as a result of recklessly irresponsible, relentless disinformation and outright lies that continue to flow,” Biden said.
Biden and fellow Democrats have broadly dismissed criticism of the federal response to the earlier Hurricane Helene — the deadliest to hit the US since Katrina in 2005 — as misinformation.
The president also accused his predecessor, Donald Trump, of being a chief culprit in spreading wrong information.
“Mr. President Trump, former President Trump, get a life, man!” Biden said Thursday.
“Help these people.”
“The public will hold him accountable,” the president said, “you better in the press hold him accountable, because you know the truth.”
Biden and Trump, 78, the Republican presidential nominee in the Nov. 5 election, have clashed over the federal response to Hurricane Helene.
Trump accused the Biden administration of neglecting to help heavily Republican areas of western North Carolina and said he called billionaire Elon Musk to deploy Starlink satellites to provide the region with internet — an initiative Biden later claimed credit for.
Trump also highlighted FEMA expenditures on illegal immigrants after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed last week that hurricane relief funds were running low. The White House has cast that argument as misleading because the migrant funds were approved by Congress for that purpose.
Although some local officials blasted FEMA’s initial response to Hurricane Helene, especially in western North Carolina and Georgia, some specific anecdotes — such as the aid agency seizing goods or blocking the flow of private assistance — didn’t hold up to subsequent scrutiny.
The White House has further alleged that the framing of some criticism constitutes misinformation — including GOP scorn over an initial $750 relief payment that neglected to note that further help would come later.
Biden administration officials argue that unfounded criticism can discourage victims from seeking federal support.
In an interview with The Post this week, Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican who represents impacted western North Carolina, said that he was outraged at the initial FEMA response to Helene, but that he personally debunked many anecdotes alleging subsequent malfeasance.
“I’m extremely disappointed that it took FEMA more than three days to make it into the district. Our storm was over about 10 a.m. on Friday [Sept. 27] … And we saw no significant presence from FEMA until Tuesday [Oct. 1],” Edwards said.
“I believe it was just absolutely inept that it took so long to get federal resources here to help the people of western North Carolina when, as best I can tell, we had two days warning that we were going to have a catastrophic weather event.
“Now we’ve moved into what I’m going to call the clunky response, where we see a strong presence from FEMA. We see a strong presence from the National Guard and the Department of Defense. It’s been a bit clunky in understanding who’s in charge and who’s doing what,” he added.
Still, Edwards said: “I’ve seen all the social media posts that accuse FEMA of turning people back and confiscating goods and that sort of thing. I get a number of calls and a number of texts making the same accusations. When I personally get those, I track them back as far as I possibly can to a credible source.
“I’ve not been able to confirm a single one of those.”
