Fox News is pushing the dangerous (and stupid) Hurricane Helene conspiracy

Fox News' Laura Ingraham has started pushing a wild conspiracy theory about the federal response to Hurricane Helene that appears to be copied from another natural disaster.

Ingraham hosted a segment Monday evening that speculated about what a strong leader Donald Trump would have been in the wake of Hurricane Helene and criticized President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their disaster response in North Carolina.

Ingraham also revived an old conspiracy theory when she criticized Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegieg, who, she noted, “loves to promote Kamala every five minutes on TV.”

“But when is he going to come on TV and tell us when I-40 is opening? Or how many bridges have to be built from scratch?” Ingraham scoffed.

“Are they going to repeal any DEI regulations that are still in place to ensure that people get the help they need as quickly as possible?” Ingraham said.

Here, Ingraham's claim seems to come out of nowhere, and it is unclear what “DEI regulations” she claims would prevent the distribution of aid or the rebuilding of vital infrastructure. Of course, DEI is something of a right-wing catch-all term for any supposed institutional failure.

Seconds later, Ingraham wryly noted that “a belated display of concern from our president and vice president has spawned conspiracy theories of their own.”

If it sounds familiar to attribute the response to natural disasters to alertness, that's because it is.

In August 2023, far-right voices, including then-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, attempted to spread a conspiracy theory that the local response to the Maui wildfires had been weakened by the “DEI agenda.”

That comparison appears to have been exactly what Ingraham was going for, because during the same broadcast on Monday, Ingraham joined former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who has made a sharp rightward turn since her Democratic presidential bid in 2020 to join Trump Campaign team.

Ingraham and Gabbard both compared the severe flooding in North Carolina to the devastating Maui wildfires in August 2023, criticizing the federal response based on…what, exactly?

Gabbard claimed that some of her friends in Asheville and surrounding areas said they experienced “the same thing that happened to our communities in West Maui.” She said her friends “didn’t see a single federal officer on the scene, not even one person wearing an orange FEMA vest.” Gabbard also insisted that the federal government put “the focus on bureaucracy.”

But shaky, sourceless reporting like Gabbard's secondhand accounts are par for the course for Fox News. In August, anchor Maria Bartiromo repeatedly claimed that Democrats were pushing to register “massive ranks of illegals” to vote in Texas, but she never provided any actual reporting to confirm the issue.

According to NBC News, FEMA reported Monday that it had delivered about a million gallons of water and more than 600,000 meals across North Carolina. Residents and local officials have criticized the government for not being adequately prepared for the severity of the destruction in Asheville, which was recently dubbed a “climate paradise.”