FEMA recently paused its recovery effort in the area amid a flurry of threats and reports of being targeted by militias.

Donald Trump kicked off his day-long tour in North Carolina by surveying the damage caused by Hurricane Helene and railing against federal emergency responders.

“I think you have to let people know how they’re doing,” the former president told reporters outside Asheville on Monday when asked about the threats against FEMA workers.

“If they were doing a great job, I think we should say that too because I think they should be rewarded … If they’re doing a poor job, we’re supposed to not say it?”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency recently paused its recovery effort in the area amid a flurry of threats and reports of being targeted by militias, and, on Oct. 12, a North Carolina man, armed with an assault rifle, was arrested for allegedly threatening FEMA workers.

Those threatening and criticizing FEMA, Trump claimed, are “honest people.”

“These people are entitled to say it,” he said.

The agency’s “security stand down” followed false claims made by Trump and several other Republicans about Helene recovery efforts, including that the US government can influence the weather and crucial aid was being withheld because FEMA spent its budget assisting illegal immigrants.

Still, the former president still used his North Carolina press conference to continue pushing hurricane misinformation, namely that the federal government spent its resources on “illegal migrants.”

CNN fact checker Daniel Dale with a detailed report on why the former president’s “debunked lies” are “false in at least four ways.”

The brutal fact check came hours after Trump made a stop in a storm-ravaged community near Asheville, North Carolina, where he used a question-and-answer session with reporters to repeat a false claim that has been widely debunked since he first made it earlier this month. The claim involves a false narrative that FEMA spent disaster relief money on migrants who entered the country illegally, leaving it with no money to help hurricane victims.

“It’s all gone. They’ve spent it on illegal migrants,” Trump said Monday, according to CNN, which adds that he went on to say: “They were not supposed to be spending the money on taking in illegal migrants.”

“First, there is zero basis for Trump’s suggestion that FEMA or the Biden administration might be running some sort of scheme to get undocumented immigrants to vote illegally in the 2024 election,” Dale wrote Monday.

A noncitizen voting in a federal election carries a felony charge, he added.

He also pushed back on the realities of Trump’s claims that FEMA disaster funds were improperly reallocated to migrants and that FEMA funds are “all gone.”

“FEMA is not out of cash,” Dale wrote, noting that FEMA told CNN last week that the agency’s Disaster Relief Fund contained some $8.5 billion remaining. The article also notes that Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) published a fact sheet earlier in October that stated “FEMA has NOT diverted disaster response funding to the border or foreign aid.”

Dale concluded his fact check by knocking down Trump's assertion that Biden administration officials “didn’t have any money left for North Carolina.”

In fact, Dale writes, various forms of assistance have poured into North Carolina in the monster storm’s aftermath, with the White House saying “more $300 million has been approved so far.”

False immigration claims

A persistent theme throughout the evening was immigration, with Trump repeating false claims that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado — and alleging that they had done the same in New York’s Times Square, citing break-in reports by the New York Post.

He reiterated the false claim that FEMA spent aid money for disaster relief on undocumented immigrants, a claim the agency itself has refuted. “When I’m president, North Carolina will get the support you need and deserve, and that is without question.”

Among the migrant groups Trump targeted in his speech were Congolese immigrants, who he called “so much more vicious” than Americans in a xenophobic aside. “They cut you up and they don’t even think about it the next day,” he said.

Trump repeatedly claimed, falsely, that Harris had never called or met with anyone with the U.S. Border Patrol while he touted the endorsement of the law enforcement agency’s labor union. He also lied that she had never visited the U.S.-Mexico border — when in fact, she visited the U.S. border in Arizona last month and spoke with local border patrol leaders there, according to the Associated Press.

He blasted Harris for remarks she made as a presidential candidate during the 2020 Democratic primaries when she stated she would provide gender-affirming surgery to undocumented immigrants in detention facilities — an attack line his campaign has made a focus in the closing weeks of the election. The New York Times reported last week that Trump’s administration also provided gender-affirming surgery to inmates.

Trump denied playing a role in the failure of a border security bill authored by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Arizona, James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, and Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, despite contemporaneous social media posts denouncing the bill.

“Ted, did I ever tell you not to sign that bill? No, right?” he asked Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., who gave remarks earlier in the afternoon. “Maybe I should go along with that story, Ted. Nobody’s had that kind of power in a long time.”

Trump said he would invoke a law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to speed up deportations.

"Think of that, 1798," he told the crowd. "That's when we had real politicians that said, we're not going to play games."

"We have to go back to 1798 to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil," Trump added.

Activists pointed out that 1790-era policies had some drawbacks.

"By 1798, politicians had made it legal to own slaves and illegal for women to vote in America," American Bridge noted on X (formerly Twitter).

Economic promises

Most of the rest of Trump’s speech centered on economic issues — denouncing Harris and the Biden administration for inflation while pledging to restore the economy to its status under his presidency.

“I’d like to begin by asking a question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Trump said at the beginning of his remarks, echoing Ronald Reagan’s 1980 appeal to voters — though with an ironic twist, as the nation was still at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in October 2020.

He repeated pledges to implement a 10% tariff on all U.S. imports — calling anyone who opposed the measure “dumb” or “corrupt” — and said he would also make interests on car loans fully tax-deductible, an innovation he compared to the invention of the paper clip. “People look at it, they say, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”

Trump decried the loss of manufacturing jobs in North Carolina, making special mention of the state’s furniture manufacturing industry — which declined precipitously in the 200os.

“I used to come down here all the time to buy furniture for hotels and things that I was building,” Trump said. “Year by year by year it was being dissipated, it was being taken over by China and others, and all we needed to do is slap some tariffs on it.”

He vowed to bring manufacturing jobs back to North Carolina — an echo of his promises during the 2016 election — and bring an end to inflation.

Just like his 2015 promise to create a 6% economy, “It will be easy”.