Supporters of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) are pissed about the apparent apathy from fans of former President Donald Trump over Idalia, the hurricane that hit Florida this week.
In remarks across social media, users such as DeSantis supporter Chris Nelson alleged that prominent pro-Trump figures hadn’t made a single remark about the storm for “political reasons.”
“Every one of these scumbags, many of whom live in Florida due to Governor Ron DeSantis’s Covid policies, have not mentioned a word about #HurricaneIdalia for political reasons,” Nelson wrote. “Some of them are elected officials. The hell with all of them. Get the hell out of the state!!”
A collage of screenshots shared by Nelson purport to show that the term “Idalia” has never been mentioned on Twitter by numerous individuals such as political commentator Charlie Kirk, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Hurricane Idalia made landfall as a Category 3 on Wednesday morning before intensifying to a Category 4 hurricane later that night. Although Idalia was later downgraded to a tropical storm, authorities warned that a “life-threatening” storm surge could still affect the coast of Florida as well as North and South Carolina.
A handful of other DeSantis supporters applauded Nelson’s tweet as exposing the callousness of Trump’s base.
“This is awesome Chris, thank you for researching this! Florida is a Republican state,” one account wrote. “And we Republicans won’t forget their lack of empathy and concern when it comes time to vote. I will bookmark this. Thank you!”
But Nelson’s tweet was largely met with backlash by Trump supporters, many of whom argued that the claims were petty.
“The scummiest thing about this is you know the DeSantis campaign or PAC gave him this graphic and told him to publish it cause they know Chris Nelson is dumb enough to do it,” Trump fan Gavin Wax wrote.
Aside from being petty, Trump supporters also argued that Nelson’s claims were inaccurate.
National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam highlighted an article on his website as evidence that he hadn’t ignored the hurricane.
“Literally published this yesterday you disingenuous piece of shit lmao,” he wrote.
Wax, president of the New York Young Republicans, also pointed to remarks made by Gaetz as proof that the Florida Republican had not ignored the hurricane.
“When is the grifting moron @ReOpenChris going to apologize to @mattgaetz? This schmuck purposefully didn’t include @mattgaetz’s government account and ignored the dozens of retweets (including of Governor DeSantis).”
Others seemed to insinuate that a hurricane, regardless of its location, is not a topic most politically-minded people would tweet about to begin with.
“I live in the path of hurricanes Idalia and Franklin and this is the first I’ve tweeted about it,” another wrote. “For a campaign that keeps saying Twitter isn’t the real world some DeSantis spox really seem to think all our conversations happen here.”
Popular far-right user DC_Draino had also been accused of ignoring the hurricane. The account had in fact tweeted about Idalia but in relation to South Carolina, not Florida.
The account later tweeted about the hurricane in the context of Florida.
While Trump supporters may not be ignoring the hurricane due to their dislike of DeSantis, the MAGA crowd has never shied from politicizing weather events. Conservatives regularly frame natural disasters as government-orchestrated plots.
Correction: This piece originally misidentified Raheem Kassam. He is the National Pulse Editor-in-Chief.
