#and then came the maga hat

[pierogisfilledwithpaint]

so, a few weeks ago i was on amazon because i was missing something in my collection. i owned the cd to tpwbyt and tmbte but not sundowning and i searched a lot but sadly only amazon sold the cd. i put it in the cart but i found something else on amazon that was uhhhh interesting...

they sell a shitty looking plush of vessel?! and no all the official merch stores dont even have this plush and i was left with a lot of questions. is this a rip off from a fan plush? who came up with the idea to make a plush like this? and why do i want to buy him?

and i actually did buy him together with sundowning and it took i think two or three weeks but he finally arrived and he looked just as shitty as in the amazon pictures and i LOVE HIM

also the image quality of the following pictures might not be the best, sorry in advance

here he is in all his plushy glory

the little symbol on his forehead looks... wonky to put it nicely and i dont know if you see this in the second picture but his cape is only sewn onto his head and...

... this feels very wrong.

anyway i cut the seam connecting the head with the cape and it looks better but sometimes the hood slides over his face and he cant see anything anymore but thats still better than whatever was going on before.

oh and another important thing

plushia, mcgyver (the squishmallow in the background) and plush vessel are friends!!!! :D

im still thinking if he should get a little nickname, because you know the ghost fandom named plush copia plushia but i cant come up with a fitting nickname? veslush? plushell? vlush? his nickname is a work in progress because my brain is bad at coming up with nicknames (��・∀・)

and by the way sundowning still hasnt arrived, its been almost a whole month looks like the trilogy will be incomplete for a while ☠️

[paradoxgavel]

living in a small rural town where nearly everyone fuckin worships trump is hell on fucking earth

[silverhalla]

neve came back and I IMMEDIATELY started crying

[naomiknight-17]

*Likes a post with art of a character I don't recognize*

*checks OP's tags*

Five Nights at Freddie's

...

*unlikes the art*

[knightofhylia]

my cards today were like "HEADS UP! TR-MP IS GOING TO BE IN YOUR CITY" 😭

[radrobotz]

i keep thinking about the transphobic cishet maga sonic from a trans girl tails au i found in 2017 why did they do that to him

[lilac-melody]

ohhhg I'm Very uncomfortable rn

[deadpresidents]

I just hope these next 4 years go by fast

This election isn't just about the next four years. With Trump in the White House and a Republican Senate at his side, the MAGA movement can pick up where they left off when it comes to packing the federal judiciary with right-wing judges who will control the Supreme Court and appellate courts throughout the country potentially for the rest of the lives of everyone reading this right now. It's the perfect recipe for them to continue stripping reproductive rights away from women nationwide and gives them the opportunity to turn their attention to the other issues that they have been dying to attack, from voting rights to gay marriage and every other extension of personal freedom that has been won by minorities and marginalized people in hard-fought battles over the past 60 years. This is the nightmare scenario that people have been warning folks about for the past few elections. It's here. And there isn't going to be a way to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

The consequences of this election will have a direct, negative impact on your life -- possibly on the entire remainder of your life. This country just re-elected a President with authoritarian tendencies who is the willing puppet of a dangerous Christian nationalist movement that figured out exactly how to manipulate him (through flattery) for their aims. They have created the perfect vehicle for a genuine cult of personality that they can use to achieve the goals they have been very clear about striving for over the past few years. And you can't blame anybody other than the American voters because they not only elected Trump, but they gave him a fucking mandate, with a Republican Senate and potentially a Republican House. They already have a right-wing dominated Supreme Court for the next few decades, and now they are going to ensure that the entire federal judiciary is in their control for years to come. And don't forget the fact that a few months ago, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that gave Presidents sweeping immunity for a broad (and conveniently undefined) range of "official" acts, so Trump is going to go into this second term knowing that not only does he not have to deal with the "guardrails" of responsible adults he had around him in his first term (Mattis, Tillerson, Kelly, General Milley, etc), but he knows he can get away with virtually anything and everything that he wants to do this time around. If you thought that Trump's first term was bad, just understand that they are prepared this time and now he's surrounded himself with people who will do his bidding -- people who are perfectly willing to let Trump be Donald Trump.

I wish there was a reason to cry foul, lodge protests, and challenge the election's results. But this wasn't a rigged election. There isn't any confusion about what the voters really wanted. The American people did this. People you know and care about and who say they care about you are the people who did this. We need to recognize that these elections aren't outliers anymore. Trump's supporters aren't simply chaos agents who got lucky on a bad day for the Democrats. That's the country we live in now and we have to find a way to resist it that actually makes a difference because now they have the keys to all the doors and all of the alarm codes. This country has normalized the conspiracy theories and nativism and racism that has powered the MAGA movement since the moment Trump came down the elevator at Trump Tower in 2015. He's given those people permission to be open with their hatred towards people who aren't like them, and it's actually become surprising to see how many Americans have been eager to take advantage of that. I didn't think I had any misconceptions about this country before Donald Trump because I recognized this nation's history, but I clearly had some misconceptions about people I thought I knew until I saw them wearing a red MAGA hat or noticed they had a gigantic flag with Trump's name hanging where their U.S. flag used to hang. Once that happened, it was like a switch went off with them and they started saying things in ways that I'd never heard them speak. I feel like that's happened to the entire country. It breaks my heart and it pisses me off.

For the past few years, I've been warning everybody about how elections have consequences. I imagine that there are hundreds of posts on this blog with that phrase in all caps listed with the tags. Now the elections have happened, and we have to live with real fucking consequences. And we're going to pass these consequences on to other generations because this is the one that you can't get a do-over on. When you give a movement like this the power and the mandate that this country just gave them, there is no easily rolling back the things that they end up doing. They are going to fundamentally change the lives of people in this nation and especially change the way the younger generations of Americans live and love and learn for years to come. And you have people in your life who made that happen. It's another disgusting day in America -- a prelude to another reprehensible four years (at the very least) -- and I'm ashamed of tens of millions of my fellow Americans because this one is on them. They know exactly who the man is that they voted for, and now we know exactly who they are, too.

[in-sufficientdata]

Who Would Jesus Bomb by Jordan Smart

If Jesus Christ came back today like you threaten he will Which poor group of people do you think that he would kill? Who would Jesus choose to starve if you gave him the chance And if there was a genocide would he take a neutral stance?

Who would Jesus bomb? Tell me, who would Jesus bomb? Would it be kids in Palestine Or how 'bout Vietnam? Would Jesus bomb the atheists, the Muslims, or the Jews? I want you to ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?"

Would he say, "It's complicated and there's sinners on all sides"? Or would he say that some people, they just deserve to die? If Christ the savior rose again then on a sidewalk slept Would you extend a hand to him or just watch where you stepped?

Who would Jesus bomb? Tell me, who would Jesus bomb? Would it be kids in Palestine Or how 'bout Vietnam? Would Jesus bomb the atheists, the Muslims, or the Jews? I want you to ask yourself, "Well, what would Jesus do?"

Would Jesus hate the gay folks, or the queer folks, or the trans? Would he suggest they end their lives according to God's plans? Would Jesus tell a homeless man to get a fucking job? Then turn his back on the poor? Would Jesus be a snob?

Who would Jesus bomb? Tell me, who would Jesus bomb? Would it be kids in Palestine Or how 'bout Vietnam? Would Jesus bomb the atheists, the Muslims, or the Jews? I want you to ask yourself, "Well, what would Jesus do?"

Would Jesus vote Republican? Or would it be Democrat? Would he be chanting four more years? Or wear a MAGA hat? Would Jesus run for president, or dictator, or worse? Would Jesus be the pastor of his own megachurch?

Who would Jesus bomb? Tell me, who would Jesus bomb? Would it be kids in Palestine Or how 'bout Vietnam? Would Jesus bomb the atheists, the Muslims, or the Jews? I want you to ask yourself, "Well, what would Jesus do?"

Would Jesus build a border wall? Would Jesus drive a tank? Would Jesus run an arsenal? Would Jesus run a bank? Would Jesus feel safe in his skin if he came to your town? Or would you still believe in Jesus if you found out he was brown?

Who would Jesus bomb? Tell me, who would Jesus bomb? Would it be kids in Palestine Or how 'bout Vietnam? Would Jesus bomb the atheists, the Muslims, or the Jews? I want you to ask yourself, "Well, what would Jesus do?" I want you to ask yourself, "Well, what would Jesus do?" I want you to ask yourself, "Well, what would Jesus do?"

[socialjusticeinamerica]

I go to concerts and events all the time and women use the men’s room no problem when their tiny restrooms overflow. The only time I ever noticed anyone complain was when a drunk women stumbled into a men’s room after a concert in Las Vegas. The men’s room was full of redneck assholes with southern accents, cowboy hats and boots. They immediately surrounded her and began harassing her with vile comments and graphic descriptions of how they were going to gang rape her. Security had to intervene to save her from those MAGA assholes. So much much for those country boys being good Christians. In New England nobody blinks an eye when women use the men’s room and if anyone started saying shit like that to woman they would have gotten the shit kicked out of their redneck asses.

Years ago history books would talk about regional peculiarities like Yankee Ingenuity and Southern Hospitality. I have spent a fair amount of time in the south, I have friends and family there, and in better times even owned property there. Let me tell you that Southern Hospitality is a myth. Unless you’re in a big city or a theme park or some other big tourist attraction, and you don’t have a southern drawl you’re going to be treated like Bin Laden showing up at Ground Zero. The rich modern day Confederates are the most elitist and bigoted people alive. The poor are some of the meanest, rudest, angriest, most hostile, and least Christian people you could ever meet.

Now that’s a blanket statement and obviously everyone doesn’t fit into that stereotype. There are plenty of normal people but very few of them will ever speak up for fear of the way they will be treated. This has been going on since the early days of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700’s. It isn’t something that can be blamed on The Southern Strategy, Nixon, Reagan, Fox News, the Tea Party, or the MAGA movement.

The North industrialized and modernized everything including banking, transportation, industry, and food crop agriculture. The rich southern Planter Class, the Aristocracy, relied on King Cotton, tobacco, and slavery. None of which was profitable or sustainable. The Planter Aristocracy soon became deeply indebted to northern banks and were at risk of losing their land, property livelihoods, and social standing. When the North and West started pressuring the South to end slavery and pay their bills the Southern

Planter elite decided to secede from the Union of States. They thought it was win-win, they could keep their slaves, escape their debt, and simply trade their cash crops with Europe. Well the Europeans switched to Egypt, India, and the Caribbean for their cotton and to a lesser extent tobacco. Only a handful of wealthy elites in each states could afford slaves in any quantity beyond one. The hillbilly rednecks were propagandized into believing they were defending their way of life and states rights against Northern (and western) Aggression. The west was populated by immigrant farmers who couldn’t afford slaves and came from countries where slavery was banned, never existed, and was condemned by European religious groups.

Long story short the United States, aka the Union or the North, had the food crops, the population, the transportation, the industry, the schools, the banks/money, and virtually every other advantage. The Confederacy was built on lies and propaganda spread by the upper class. They had nothing but bitterness and resent at the North and West that they still have to this day. Treating women and marginalized people with disrespect is ingrained into their DNA and so tightly wound into their societal fabric it may never come out. Even their LGBT community is racist AF. Now their were good people in the South, called Unionists, who didn’t agree with slavery, secession, or the Planter Aristocracy and many of them moved North and some even joined the US Army to fight against the Confederacy. Ironically some of them remained in the Army softer the Civil War ended and took part in the “Indian” Wars, after which they returned to the South as military heroes with their disloyalty to the Confederacy forgiven.

A scorpion can not change its nature. And people who have been propagandized since the 1700’s by the wealthy elite can’t be expected to change their “traditions” overnight. Thanks to Republican oligarchs a disproportionate percentage of Southerners and rural people blame modern Democrats, who are now mainly in the Northeast and the West Coast as they were during the Civil War, for all their problems.

They’ll never understand that the modern Republicans and oligarchs are holding them hostage and denying them jobs, education, unions, prosperity, and healthcare. They have been conditioned to for two centuries to blame outsiders for their problems while supporting their oligarch oppressors. Denigrating women, people of color, and marginalized groups is a sadly a rite of passage for the majority in the Old Confederacy. They’re like the people of Eastern Europe who have been holding grudges for so long they don’t even remember why they they are collectively doing it. They need to be deprogrammed from that Confederate mindset first and then deprogrammed from the Republican/MAGA mindset but that’s not likely to happen anytime soon if at all. We’d have to win back the White House, the Congress, the SCOTUS, and the state legislatures first. Then we’d have to utterly smash the Republican Party and ban the oligarchs and their dark money from politics. Following that Herculean talk we’d have to invest heavily in public education across the South and rural West and return it to modern standards from the plundered mess the oligarchs and their privatized schools have created.

A second civil war may be looming and they are propping for it. Invariably they will lose for the same reasons they did the first time but it will be far more costly and have lingering effects that may never be reconciled. It won’t be a regional war like the first time but rather a bloody mess like the war in Northern Ireland with terror bombings and revenge killings. No single community will be safe. Sometimes I think we’d be better off letting Texas and Florida secede and take Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana with them. The remainder of the MAGAts would flock there and shoot themselves into third world status. The rest of the US would keep the military, the nukes, planes, ships, tanks, and all Federal property. There are blue areas in the sunbelt but as a whole I can’t see those states being reformed. Texas is a cancer since it’s been under Republican rule and Florida is pathetically imitating them. The in between states, with the exception of some blue cities are virtually third world states and as backwards as can be.

I mean no offense to the good people of the red states. My issue is with the Republican misrule over those areas and the backwards brainwashing they have subjected their citizens to. I feel deeply for the Democrats and other decent people there. But history has taught us time and again that unless a majority of the people want change it is impossible to force democracy on them. The Republican oligarchs have spent billions of dollars since the 1960’s to reshape this country and to maintain that Confederate mindset in the South. That’s not something that can be undone by electing a Democratic president and a handful of charismatic congressmen and women.

[projectreclaim]

He went “Dark MAGA” to the polls to cast his early vote for Donald Trump. It is the HONOR of a lifetime to vote for this man, who took a BULLET for America, for ALL OF US.

Pity, he wasn’t able to wear the hat in, but came in clutch with his Flynn shirt. 🫡

[arabian-batboy]

If I had a time-machine I will go back in time and kill the guy who came up with the idea of having two nearly identical parties rule the US's policy while constantly fighting each other and swearing up and down that their twin party will doom the country so that dumb Americans will make unconditionally supporting one party and unconditionally hating the other party be their only personality trait without realizing that they're both the same exact satan, the only difference is that one wears a MAGA hat while the other has pronouns in their bio, but their kill count and willingness to kill more innocent people is basically the same.

[redpillbiker]

Back in 2020 this photo made me ask myself which political side really aligned with my life outlook and which didn't, who were 'my people' and who weren't.

I got my first MAGA hat that year and at least started to see things differently. It took a long time coming, but I came to more objectively consider what I really believed, questioning if social justice activists really were creating the fairer world they advocated.

Real maturity of thought awakened me, not woke agitation for a redistributive levelling of society that recommits injustices anew based on fetishizing skin pigment, telling men that they're toxic and Whites that they're privileged.

All lives do matter, and identity politics of resentment that institutionalizes victimhood is a recipe for social disaster, not fairness and justice.

Weaving each act of police misconduct into a systemic racism narrative that requires radical redress of reparations only fosters civil discord, not the true racial harmony activists claim as a goal.

There are acts of corruption and misconduct in all occupations, but plenty more good deeds go on and go well, which is why our world isn't in constant chaos.

To taint all law enforcement as endemically racist is just as racist as regarding all people of a non-White race as inherently prone to criminality.

Individuals are responsible for their individual acts, right and wrong, and lumping lots of people together to concoct a larger storyline is often disingenuous, particularly when based on physical attributes.

The justice system will take care of wrongdoers and exonerate those falsely accused. No amount of street protests will alter what happens in any courtroom.

Intentions may be good on the part of some activists, but if they want true solidarity of spirit with kindred minds, it's better to embrace mutual hobbies like being in the riding club in this photo rather than being a constantly angry public protester whose agitation won't change any hearts and minds--least of all those denigrated by protesters as being responsible for all social ills based on a supposedly inherited legacy of past injustices no one has any control over today.

[riddled-forensic]

Assassins experience!

Super small theater, room with the set jutting out and the audience sitting along 3 walls

Rows of pennant (triangle) banners along the walls and some hanging down from the grid

Hanging on the wall banners were photos of the president, they would get a light on them when they were assassinated/mentioned

The Proprietor was FULL carnie sleaze, also super tall and leaned into being cartoonishly evil

At the end of Everybody’s Got The Right, everyone grabbed one of the hanging pennants and ripped it off the grid, the noise it made mimicked the gunshots from Everybody’s Got The Right (Respire)

Booth was white and preformed The Ballad of Booth as it was originally written

Booth was blonde and you could hardly see his mustache

They went with this look for Guiteau

The actor for Guiteau went zany for Guiteau’s voice, the most similar voice I can think of is Ned Flanders

THE BALLADEER WAS SO GOOD

Emma Goodman didn’t have her glasses :(

Guiteau’s “First of all when you’ve a gun… everybody pays attention!” Didn’t quite work because the guns weren’t allowed to be pointed at the audience, he instead pointed and shot at Booth

They skipped the first third of The Ballad of Czolgosz for no apparent reason

At the end of Unworthy of Your Love, Squeaky made out with her picture of Charles Manson and started dragging it down her body

During The Ballad of Guiteau, Guiteau and the Balladeer were sort of playful with each other and danced in sync, I found it very fun

Byck was PHENOMENAL, he gave the monologues his all and he was one of my favorite parts of the show

The guy playing the Balladeer did a good job showing his positiveness, it felt very sincere

During Another National Anthem the Proprietor handed all the assassins boater hats that they then wore

boater hat ^

Near the end of Another Nation Anthem, Booth held his hat above The Balladeers head and then scurried off stage

Lee Harvey Oswald transformation happened off stage 😒

Booth and Lee were really good during their interaction with each other, they didn’t over act any of the anger (not to say that Booth didn’t have his yelling fit, but it wasn’t like over the top or anything)

Lee also did a good job a portraying Lee’s emotions, he’s just a really good actor in general

Booth, with the rest of the assassins behind him, winked at Lee right before Lee turned around to shot JFK

They projected the JFK footage on the set while the ensemble came out for Something Just Broke

At the end of Everybody’s Got The Right (Reprise) the Proprietor came out in a Trump wig and MAGA hat and everyone pointed at him and shot, the stage lights turning red with Prop holding his ear

In general it was super good! Huge props to the choreographer because all of the choreo and dancing was amazing

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Wilfred Reilly

Published: Nov 27, 2023

Why do respected institutions continue to propound verifiably wrong conspiracy theories about how dangerous America is?

It is around 35 times more dangerous to be black than to be transgender in America — and at least an order of magnitude more dangerous to be a young and working-class white guy, a Southerner, or a Yank of Hispanic origin.

This seems relevant given that a national event titled “Transgender Day of Remembrance” took place just a few days ago. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre took the occasion to mount the podium for a formal press briefing attended by many national media outlets — during which she declared that the United States “grieves” for the all of 26 transgender Americans killed in 2023. These victims, Jean-Pierre went on to emphasize, were no mere Dead White Males but “disproportionately black women and women of color.”

Jean-Pierre’s statistics came from the Human Rights Campaign, an influential pro-LGBT lobbying group that organizes Trans Remembrance Day (as part of the broader Transgender Awareness Week) on an annual basis and frequently publishes reports on anti-transgender brutality with titles like “An Epidemic of Violence.” The visibility of such content has apparently had an effect: A Google search for the phrase “trans genocide” turns up an online-encyclopedia article that prints out to five closely spaced pages and defines that term as “the elevated level of systemic violence and discrimination that exists against trans people” in the West.

The only catch is that no such systemic violence exists. According to Jean-Pierre herself — and, presumably, to an LGBT-rights group with every interest in magnifying the phenomenon — the total number of trans-identified Americans known to have been killed in 2023 is 26. If we round that up to 30 (to account for December) and assume that just 1 percent of the U.S. population is trans (given that, as one very limited survey shows, around 3 percent of young Americans are), we obtain an annual transgender-murder rate of 30 in 3.32 million, or just 0.9 people per 100,000 people. Even if we, alternatively, assume an American trans population of just 1.6 million — to gel with one high-quality but conservative recent estimate — the resulting murder rate would be merely 1.9 per 100,000 people.

To put that in context, the murder rate for blacks in the U.S. is currently 30–33 per 100,000 people. The African-American community is an outlier but not necessarily a remarkable one: In a representative recent year, 4.5 percent of black-male deaths were the results of homicide, versus 2.3 percent for American Indians, 2.2 percent for Hispanics, 2 percent for Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders . . . and 4.9 percent for all whites under full majority. To say the obvious, all of these groups are currently living far more dangerously than “trans women.”

Further, almost none of the small number of murders of trans people recorded in 2023 were due to “transphobia” from the MAGA-hat set. According to an excellent breakdown posted to social media by writer Pi Campbell, the “victims” highlighted by the Human Rights Campaign included such citizens as Banko Brown (the San Francisco thief/robber shot during a confrontation with a security guard), Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán (an armed environmental activist killed during a shootout with Atlanta police during the violent Stop Cop City protests), and DéVonnie J’Rae Johnson (a trans woman who attacked a security officer with a fire extinguisher).

Others on the list were Maria Jose Rivera — killed in a tragic and widely publicized murder-suicide involving her boyfriend — Camdyn Rider (murder-suicide with husband), Thomas “Tom-Tom” Robertson (victim of a shooting targeting someone else), and a black trans fashion plate called “YOKO” (hit by an SUV while piloting a small scooter). So far as I can tell, not one proven or even seriously alleged hate crime appears anywhere on the Human Rights Campaign’s list.

Also, few of the murders of these (mostly) trans-identified males seem to have occurred anywhere near MAGA country. Per my analysis of the list, which I ran by a research associate and a friend in law enforcement, only four of the 26 victims, and three or four of their killers, were white. Sixteen victims were black and five were Hispanic, while seven murderers were identified as black, at least two were Hispanic, and seven were unknown (most of the remaining killers were police or security guards of various races).

I will note that this point has been made previously by the skilled gonzo journalist Andy Ngo, who earned a few weeks of internet infamy in 2019 for digging into a series of anti-trans attacks and summing up his resulting data set as: “Who is behind the murders? Mostly Black men.” That year, I made some of the same points detailed above for the magazine Quillette: pointing out that the annual number of trans fatalities was around 29, and that this broke down to a grand total of one killing for every 67,690 transgender Americans.

The “trans genocide” hysteria, wholly untethered from reality, does not stand alone. Over the past decade or so, American discourse has fallen prey to what often seems like a constant stream of stupid and baseless panics. At one point during the Black Lives Matter mania, one of the nation’s top attorneys — Ben Crump — penned a best-selling book that unironically argues that white cops and vigilantes are committing “genocide” against black people. When the highly respected Skeptic Research Center conducted large-n polling on the issue of police violence just two years later, it found that one of the most common answers given by both black and Caucasian leftists to the question of how many unarmed blacks they thought were shot annually by cops was “about 10,000.” The real number, per last year’s data from the not-much-right-of-Lenin Washington Post, was “twelve.”

On some level, the real question here is “Why?” Why do powerful figures and respected institutions — the president of the United States and his spox, from behind the White House podium! — continue to propound insanely and verifiably wrong conspiracy theories about how dangerous the country is? I think that the answer is because, to paraphrase Larry Elder, there is a Narrative to save.

For both “ethical” and strategic reasons — Crump made his millions by suing police officers involved in racialized cases — many members of the American elite have publicly committed themselves to the belief that racism and other forms of bias explain all disparities in group outcomes. Publicly advancing this narrative requires having at least some examples of extreme racism, sexism, and so forth on hand to display. The problem is that, in modern upper-middle-class American life, these things rarely exist. The demand for horrors far exceeds their supply, and it may sometimes become . . . strategically necessary to invent some.

This reality, I believe, accounts for a pattern with which we have all become increasingly familiar. First, a horrific claim of bias is made (Jussie Smollett, Covington Catholic High School, Duke University lacrosse, Michael Brown, Jacob Blake, Canadian mass graves, Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate). Next, major social changes are made based on the claim and its implications. Third and finally, the unsupported claim collapses.

When we see social movements like the Trans Day of Remembrance, it is important that we all — well — remember this cycle.

[ Via: https://archive.today/AyJJr ]

==

When activists use this kind of histrionic language, it's a sure sign that it's fake.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

S.V. Dáte at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump, who as president withheld hurricane aid to Puerto Rico and threatened to withhold wildfire assistance to California, on Monday falsely accused President Joe Biden of failing to help Hurricane Helene’s flood victims in western North Carolina and Georgia, having “left Americans to drown” in the South. “He’s been calling the president, he hasn’t been able to get him,” Trump said of Georgia’s governor, fellow Republican Brian Kemp, in his remarks to reporters in Valdosta, a city in the southern part of the state. It was a lie — refuted by Kemp himself earlier that day. “The president just called me yesterday afternoon. I missed him and I called him right back,” Kemp told reporters. “And he just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’”

That falsehood was the latest in a string of lies Trump has issued about the response by Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, to the Category 4 storm that came ashore late Thursday. Just before flying to Valdosta, the coup-attempting former president posted on social media about western North Carolina: “I’ll be there shortly, but don’t like the reports that I’m getting about the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of the State, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas. MAGA!” He then posted an even more inflammatory claim, again with zero evidence of malfeasance: “They have left Americans to drown in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and elsewhere in the South.”

And at the Valdosta Regional Airport, asked by a reporter if he had contacted Biden about the response, Trump, wearing his red campaign MAGA hat, answered, “No, I haven’t reached out to him. I think he’s sleeping right now, actually.” In fact, Biden had just minutes earlier detailed to reporters at the White House his administration’s actions to date and planned next steps. He also explained that he intends to visit the worst-hit areas in North Carolina, but not until later in the week so as not to get in the way of operations on the ground with his large traveling entourage and security detail. “This can be disruptive,” he said. He later announced that he would, in fact, visit North Carolina on Wednesday.

[...] Trump’s accusations that Biden is intentionally withholding assistance from areas where residents are largely critical of him, however, do mirror his precise behavior as president when he withheld $20 billion in congressionally approved aid to Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017 and threatened to withhold federal assistance to California to deal with wildfires. The question of federal assistance in the event of natural disasters may become moot should Trump win back the White House. Under the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — which Trump initially praised for detailing “exactly what our movement will do” if he returned to office but in recent months has disavowed as Democrats publicized its contents — federal programs helping individuals and businesses would be slashed. The massive proposal also would scrap the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as turn over forecasting, and presumably control, over a fleet of weather satellites paid for with many billions of tax dollars to private companies.

Colossal liar Donald Trump baselessly accused Joe Biden and Kamala Harris of “withholding" aid victims to Hurricane Helene victims… except that Biden and Harris are helping out victims of Helene with ample aid.

Trump, during his “Presidency”, has repeatedly withheld aid for political purposes.

If he gets back in again, this time with Project 2025’s assistance, Trump will likely withhold disaster relief funding to areas that don’t vote for him.

Want fair disaster relief, regardless of politics? Vote Harris/Walz!