While Donald Trump took credit for bringing truckloads of supplies to hurricane-ravaged Georgia last month, it appears that the only thing he brought to Valdosta that day was traffic and a first-responder diversion from the relief effort.
“Today I’ve come to Valdosta with large semi-trucks, many of them filled with relief aid, and a tanker truck filled up with gasoline. We have a couple of the big tanker trucks filled up with gasoline,” the coup-attempting former president said Sept. 30 in front of a destroyed furniture store in Valdosta.
Trump’s campaign later sent out a press release headlined, “President Trump Delivers Relief, Support To Hurricane-Ravaged South,” which then stated: “President Trump delivered relief supplies to aid in the hurricane’s devastating aftermath: ‘We have a lot of truckloads of different items, from oil to water to all sorts of equipment that’s going to help ... We’re here today to stand in complete solidarity with the people of Georgia and with all of those suffering.’”
In reality, those trucks were brought by Samaritan’s Purse, a charity run by the pastor Franklin Graham. They were already there by the time Trump flew to the local airport and then rode into town in his Secret Service motorcade, according to residents.
That motorcade and the increased security needed at Trump’s photo opportunity required 42 officers from the Georgia State Patrol, according to documents from that agency obtained by HuffPost.
A smaller number of Valdosta police officers and deputies from the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office also provided traffic control at the town’s intersections during Trump’s visit, said Mayor Scott James Matheson. He acknowledged that those officers could not continue with relief and cleanup efforts while they were detailed to Trump’s visit.
Not wanting to interfere with cleanup efforts, in fact, was the reason President Joe Biden cited for waiting to visit until roads were open and immediate needs taken care of. It was the same reason Trump’s own energy secretary, Rick Perry, cited in 2017 when he explained why then-President Trump had not visited Houston after Hurricane Harvey.
“He really wanted to be where there were citizens being affected. He was advised: the better place for you to go is Corpus Christi or San Antonio or Austin, where no search and rescue resources would be pulled away from what they’re doing,” Perry said.
Trump’s campaign defended the timing of the visit to Valdosta. “He met with the volunteers. He shook their hands,” said spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.
Leavitt further insisted that Trump was, in fact, responsible for delivering the supplies. “He didn’t misspeak at all,” she said, adding that Trump could rightfully take credit for those supplies because he had started a GoFundMe online campaign for Hurricane Helene victims and had donated to Graham’s charity.
“He’s donated millions to Samaritan’s Purse,” Leavitt said.
She would not detail when those donations occurred, nor would she say how much — if anything ― Trump had personally given to the Helene GoFundMe. His name does not appear on the list of the GoFundMe campaign’s top donors, who had contributed between $15,000 and $500,000 as of Friday.
In September 2017, after criticism in the press for how Trump’s inaugural committee had spent the $107 million it had raised mainly from wealthy individuals and corporate donors, it announced it was giving $1 million each to three storm-related charities: the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and Samaritan’s Purse.
That $1 million gift to Graham’s charity, however, was not Trump’s money, and he was not permitted by law to keep any of it for personal use.
Samaritan’s Purse declined to confirm whether Trump had donated anything to the group using his own money, citing its policy not to disclose donors. The group runs a well-organized hurricane relief operation that for Helene dispatched tractor-trailer trucks filled with supplies to Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. The relief to Valdosta was sent on Sept. 29 and staged in a church about 3 miles north of the spot Trump visited the following afternoon.
Trump’s tax records released by the House Ways and Means Committee in 2022 and given to The New York Times by his niece, Mary Trump, meanwhile, show that the vast majority of Trump’s charitable donations through two decades have been in the form of conservation easements — promises that he will not develop land he already owns.
Much of the $11 million in cash he donated to charities between 2005 and 2020 came as he was running for president in 2015 and 2016 and in his first year in office. In 2017, he reported $1.9 million in cash donations — the recipients are not listed in the forms released by the House committee — and that number fell to $500,000 in 2018 and $505,000 in 2019. In 2020, he reported giving zero.
It is possible Trump gave millions to charities, including Samaritan’s Purse, but did not claim a tax deduction for the gifts. If Trump did indeed take credit for charitable work in Valdosta that he had nothing to do with, however, it would not be the first time.
In 1996, Trump showed up at a ribbon-cutting for a new nursery school in New York built for children suffering from AIDS. He got up on stage and took the seat of someone who was an actual major donor to the Association to Benefit Children. Trump had not given the group a dime but pretended that he had.
The Washington Post article in 2016 that revealed the nursery school episode also found that Trump frequently boasted of charitable donations that he had never made and that he had a history of using his “Trump Foundation” charity for paying personal and business bills.
In 2019, he was forced to shut down the foundation, pay a $2 million fine and agree to restrictions on his ability to operate a charity in New York State going forward as part of a settlement with the state’s attorney general. Further, his eldest three children, who were on the foundation’s board, had to undergo charity leadership training.
Trump is running to win back the White House after losing reelection in 2020. Since Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida and then flooded sections of several states to the north, he has been spreading numerous lies about President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ response to the storm.
Matheson said Thursday he had no problem with Trump’s visit and the police resources it consumed because of the attention it helped bring to the devastation his town had suffered.
“All the cameras he brought … he helped tell our story,” Matheson said. “We were taking any attention we could.”
Trump was not the first major political figure to visit, Matheson added. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic Sen. John Ossoff both visited two days earlier, on Sept. 28. Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Biden visited on Oct. 3.
Matheson said he rode with Biden in his armored SUV to visit a flattened pecan farm on the outskirts of town and thanked the president for granting federal grant money without the requirement of a local match for storm recovery.
“My ride with him was just a thank you ride,” he said.