The Politics of Disaster

When former President Donald Trump traveled to Valdosta, Ga., today, he seemed to want to project the image of a leader in command amid the devastation of Hurricane Helene.

He had truckloads of “things,” he said. He had spoken to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, he said. He had even talked with Elon Musk, he said, about getting satellite internet “hooked up” after a storm that has knocked out power and connectivity to hundreds of thousands of people. (A White House spokesman said in a post on X that the deployment of such systems was “already happening.”)

Trump’s words there were vague and, at times, false. Still, he seemed to be hoping to draw comparisons to Barack Obama, then the president, who was widely praised for his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 — and not to, well, himself after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, when he tossed paper towels to residents of a U.S. territory where many said they had been roundly ignored.

“A lot of people have been lost in this terrible, this terrible storm, this terrible hurricane,” Trump said Monday, before asking the assembled dignitaries to join him in a moment of “silence and prayer.”

Hurricane Helene roared ashore in Florida on Friday night, soaked parts of the Southeast and unleashed deadly flooding and mudslides across western North Carolina, with a death toll that has already topped 100 people across six states. The full extent of the devastation is only just emerging, and it can seem inappropriate to focus on politics when people are battling for survival.

The fact is, though, that the politics of disaster have loomed large in several recent elections — and, after Hurricane Helene barreled through two swing states, 2024 may be no