House speaker bashes Biden’s hurricane response while doing nothing

It’s textbook hypocrisy: House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday that he won’t commit to reconvening his chamber to pass additional disaster-relief funding, yet he criticizes the federal government’s response as lacking. 

“We’ll be back in session immediately after the election,” Johnson said, after refusing to commit to bringing House members back to vote.

“That’s 30 days from now. The thing about these hurricanes and disasters of this magnitude is it takes a while to calculate the actual damages, and the states are going to need some time to do that,” Johnson said, adding that it takes time to figure out “specific needs and requests based upon the actual damages.”

Johnson also recently railed against Biden’s response thus far, noting that lawmakers released $20 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds last month. “[Biden and Harris] are scrambling to cover their egregious errors and mistakes,” the Louisiana Republican told Fox News Digital on Friday. “And there’s an effort to blame others or blame circumstances when this is just purely a lack of leadership and response.” 

However, the Department of Homeland Security says FEMA will run out of funding before the end of the hurricane season.

Johnson’s hypocrisy comes amid the right spreading conspiracy theories about FEMA’s response to Hurricane Helene—conspiracies that even Republican governors, state officials, state government websites, and FEMA itself have had to debunk. These false claims have not only confused the public but also put unnecessary pressure on local leaders and military personnel working tirelessly to support their communities  in the wake of this disaster.