WASHINGTON — As President Joe Biden delivered a stark warning Wednesday about the dangerous hurricane barreling toward Florida, he shot down misinformation about the storm, including one particular conspiracy theory propagated by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“The claims are getting even more bizarre. Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congressman with Georgia, is now saying the federal government is literally controlling the weather for controlling the weather. It’s beyond ridiculous. It’s got to stop,” Biden said during a virtual briefing at the White House as he received updates about Hurricane Milton. The storm is expected to make landfall in Florida later Wednesday and could be catastrophic for the region.
Greene suggested in an Oct. 3 post on X that people were controlling the weather: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done,” she wrote.
One of Greene’s own GOP colleagues, Rep. Carlos Giménez of Florida, wrote in response to her on X this morning, “Humans cannot create or control hurricanes. Anyone who thinks they can, needs to have their head examined.”
Around the same time as Biden’s briefing on Wednesday, Greene repeated her claims and suggested that the federal government is aware of it.
“Well some of them are listed on NOAA, as well as most of the ways weather can be modified, because they are required to report it to the Secretary of Commerce by the Weather Modification Act of 1972,” she wrote on X. The NOAA government website has a library catalog of 1,026 entries of weather modifications, but that’s not all of them.”
She continued, “If your home or business or property is damaged or a loved one is killed by their weather modifications shouldn’t you be eligible for compensation? After all, did they ask you if you agreed to our weather being modified?”
On Tuesday, she quoted an article from The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website known for spreading conspiracy theories, that said, “Marjorie Taylor Greene was right. Yes, scientists do control the weather.”
Biden also said in his briefing Wednesday that Greene’s conspiracy theory was among the “reckless, irresponsible and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies” over the last few weeks. The president said that it’s undermining rescues in the wake of Hurricane Helene and he accused Trump of leading “the onslaught of lies.”
“Assertions have been made that property is being confiscated. That’s simply not true,” he said. “They’re saying people impacted by these storms will receive $750 in cash and no more. That’s simply not true. They’re saying the money is needed for this crisis is being diverted to migrants. What a ridiculous thing to say, it’s not true.”
Federal Emergency Management Agency set up a website to deal with the influx of rumors spreading about the hurricanes, including the false claim that FEMA is redirecting disaster relief towards migrants.
NBC News has reached out to Greene’s office and Trump’s campaign for comment.
Another Republican, Rep. Chuck Edwards, of North Carolina, put a statement Tuesday shooting down the “outrageous rumors” about Hurricane Helene and the federal government’s response to it.
“Hurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the government to seize and access lithium deposits in Chimney Rock,” he said. “Nobody can control the weather.”
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