Elon Musk Joins Trump’s Fight With White House Over Hurricane Helene
Donald Trump is taking credit for getting Appalachians connected to Elon Musk’s Starlink before President Joe Biden, and Musk—still hoping for a job in a Trump Cabinet—is helping him with the lie. “I just spoke to Elon. I’m getting him—we want to get Starlink hooked up because they have no communication whatsoever. And Elon will always come through. We know that,” Trump said Monday during a visit to Georgia, while mischaracterizing the federal response to Hurricane Helene. “And so we’re working on that, getting them hooked up.” Musk backed Trump’s claim on Tuesday morning, asserting that Trump alerted him “to additional people who need Starlink Internet in North Carolina.” There’s just one problem with Trump taking all the credit though. According to White House spokesperson Andrew Bates, this was “already happening.”A Monday press release from the Federal Emergency Management Agency showed that 40 Starlink satellite systems are available” in the region for emergency communications, with another 140 satellites “being shipped to assist with communications infrastructure restoration.” Jaclyn Rothenberg, director of public affairs for FEMA, told Business Insider that Trump wasn’t involved in sending satellites to disaster areas and that the federal government made the decision on Sunday.In Trump’s speech, it wasn’t clear if he was calling for more Starlink satellites to be deployed, but given his general lies about the federal government’s hurricane response, it’s likely he was ignoring the Biden administration’s efforts altogether. And now, Musk is helping him push the narrative that Biden is “sleeping” through the hurricane damage. Also on Monday, Trump claimed that North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper was ignoring Republican hit areas (not true) and that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was “having a hard time getting the president on the phone,” despite Biden having spoken with Kemp the day before. It’s clear that Trump, and his billionaire friends, will do anything to make this natural disaster a publicity stunt.
Donald Trump is taking credit for getting Appalachians connected to Elon Musk’s Starlink before President Joe Biden, and Musk—still hoping for a job in a Trump Cabinet—is helping him with the lie.
“I just spoke to Elon. I’m getting him—we want to get Starlink hooked up because they have no communication whatsoever. And Elon will always come through. We know that,” Trump said Monday during a visit to Georgia, while mischaracterizing the federal response to Hurricane Helene. “And so we’re working on that, getting them hooked up.”
Musk backed Trump’s claim on Tuesday morning, asserting that Trump alerted him “to additional people who need Starlink Internet in North Carolina.”
There’s just one problem with Trump taking all the credit though. According to White House spokesperson Andrew Bates, this was “already happening.”
A Monday press release from the Federal Emergency Management Agency showed that 40 Starlink satellite systems are available” in the region for emergency communications, with another 140 satellites “being shipped to assist with communications infrastructure restoration.”
Jaclyn Rothenberg, director of public affairs for FEMA, told Business Insider that Trump wasn’t involved in sending satellites to disaster areas and that the federal government made the decision on Sunday.
In Trump’s speech, it wasn’t clear if he was calling for more Starlink satellites to be deployed, but given his general lies about the federal government’s hurricane response, it’s likely he was ignoring the Biden administration’s efforts altogether. And now, Musk is helping him push the narrative that Biden is “sleeping” through the hurricane damage.
Also on Monday, Trump claimed that North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper was ignoring Republican hit areas (not true) and that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was “having a hard time getting the president on the phone,” despite Biden having spoken with Kemp the day before.
It’s clear that Trump, and his billionaire friends, will do anything to make this natural disaster a publicity stunt.
