Further to this disgraceful story, Politico’s Scott Waldman & Thomas Frank write in their recent article that “Trump initially refused to give California wildfire aid because it’s a blue state, ex-aide says” (1).
I repeat, for the benefit of #American readers, our experience of this kind of #politicisation of #disasters in Australia: we had a #conservative prime minister that in 2022 was faced with massive #floods and #politicised the response to them: #funding his party’s seats and states but not the other party’s seats and states (2). What happened to that prime minister is instructive: he led his party to the next #election and was soundly #defeated: recording the worst result for Australia’s #centre-right #governing parties in seventy years. The state #government that benefited most from the disaster funding also lost office.
When the election results begin to come in on Tuesday #Nov5 and the former #POTUS inevitably starts #lying about another ‘stolen election’, spare a thought for those in states affected by #Helene who #flipped their #vote #blue after Trump’s disgusting behaviour following the #hurricane: it will be these #voters, amongst many others, that he will be trying to #disenfranchise.
(2) https://www.sstuwa.org.au/WesternTeacher/20/volume-513-april-2022/man-who-should-not-be-pm
done differently