Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Peter Hamby. Greetings from Georgia, where I’m traveling for my Snapchat show and talking to Gen Z voters in battleground states. Big thanks to my pal Dylan Byers for filling in on The Powers That Be during my road trip.

Tonight, a look at the fear and suspicion consuming Appalachia, as MAGA influencers and Donald Trump, himself, spread lies and social media fakery about Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. I talked to one small-town mayor, Zeb Smathers of Canton, who said the hard work of recovery is being hindered by “a black hole of disaster porn.”

But first, here’s Abby Livingston on the creep of late-cycle donor fatigue…

• Tapped out: Donor fatigue is a real phenomenon in down-ballot races this cycle, due in part to a new trend of incumbents, candidates, and party leaders hustling for money late in the race. A decade ago, the conventional wisdom suggested that candidates should keep their burn rates as low as possible until the fall general election campaign, when they would unleash most of their fundraising dollars on TV ads and direct mail. But with the cost of down-ballot federal campaigning skyrocketing during the last six years, late-campaign fundraising is now necessary—and donors are exhausted. “We are finding that donors are tapped out,” a House Democratic chief told me.

  The pinch is especially acute on the Republican side, where individual candidate fundraising has lagged Democrats, and a pair of leadership races—Mitch McConnell stepping down, Mike Johnson’s uncertain future, etcetera—has strained purse strings. As one Republican consultant told me: “My guys are stressed.” Indeed, almost everyone in the G.O.P. has passed through Texas (the party’s favorite piggy bank) in the past few weeks. John Cornyn recently hosted colleagues in the state, and his rival for Senate Republican leader, South Dakota’s John Thune, traveled to Texas on his own fundraising trip about a month ago. On the House side, Johnson and majority whip Tom Emmer recently raised money in Texas, but it’s individual, out-of-state candidates and members who are tapping the state dry. Donors there and elsewhere from both parties are telegraphing the need for a cooling-off period after this election.

• Storm warning: In the aftermath of Helene, and in anticipation of Hurricane Milton, contingency planning around extreme weather events may soon become part of the standard campaign playbook. The Florida sources I spoke with today were feeling uneasy about Milton’s trajectory toward the state’s central coastline, and the potential loss of life and property. Indeed, I don’t get the sense that politics is on the minds of many Floridians right now, despite Republican Rick Scott’s competitive Senate race, and two mildly competitive House districts—Darren Soto’s 9th District and Republican Anna Paulina Luna’s 13th District.

  The priority, understandably, is to batten down the hatches, but there may be unforeseen political implications as a result of Milton, based on everything from Biden’s response to the potential dislocation of voters. Meteorologists aren’t the only ones watching this one closely.

Junior was tall and charismatic, and he decided to use those gifts to become a tent revivalist at the tender age of 15, traveling through the hollers and towns of Appalachia in the 1940s, preaching his Pentecostalist interpretation of the scripture. He promised, conveniently, to heal cripples and save souls, a talent he later took to A.M. radio, a platform that allowed him to solicit donations from listeners, lest they face the wrath of a vengeful God. Later in life, he was named a “Champion Soul Saver” by some of his followers. “You shoulda seen the guy,” my Uncle Larry told me. “Dyed-hair pompadour. Wore his vocabulary on his sleeve. Would use multisyllabic words to mystify the congregants.”

My grandparents, more Presbyterian and more principled, were not as mystified. They saw something else: a hustler who was taking advantage of poor and desperate people for his own material gain. He capitalized on the faith of the people he preached to, pocketing their money and buying, among other items, a late model Cadillac and a Martin D45 guitar that he couldn’t play. It was just a toy to show off to a succession of girlfriends. My grandfather, who made an honest living thanks to the Tennessee Valley Authority and General Electric, eventually made clear he had no patience or respect for his Bible-quoting brother and his swindling ways. While he never formally excommunicated Junior from the family, they grew distant. My beloved Mississippi-born grandmother, contemptuous of false prophets, shared those opinions and passed them along to my father and uncle. By the time my brothers and I were born, later in the century, our great-uncle was decidedly not in the family picture.

I thought about this history last week when I started to see a parade of digital con men taking advantage of the suffering we’ve been watching in the Carolina hills. Unlike Junior, the new crop of hustlers are out-of-staters who probably can’t recite a lick of scripture and have almost certainly never sipped a Cheerwine. I’m talking about Elon Musk, Clay Travis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Hilton and other wannabe MAGA influencers—wealthy pro-Trump social media addicts who display not one ounce of shame while posting lies and falsehoods about the storm with their manicured fingers, sowing cynicism and distrust among the very people they claim to speak for.

On Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, they’re making all kinds of wild claims that are worming their way into the communities most affected by the storm: that the government is controlling the weather, that FEMA is confiscating property and denying requests for body bags, that the F.A.A. is blocking flights and choppers from delivering supplies, that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would rather send money to illegal immigrants than storm victims, and that Democrats are intentionally slowing rescue efforts to help themselves in a battleground state come November. Donald Trump himself has been repeating that lie, claiming that Democrats are “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.”

All of these claims are being shared without evidence, to score political points and chase clout, with no actual stakes for the people posting them. But the rumors and lies are being parroted by people in storm-damaged communities, many of them Trump supporters, creating a fog of disinformation that’s slowing the recovery efforts and reinforcing already deep cultural suspicion toward state and federal officials. It’s gotten so bad that FEMA, the American Red Cross, and the North Carolina Department of Public Safety are begging people to stop sharing what they see online. “Nefarious actors and those with ill intent may be taking advantage of this situation by spreading false information,” the state’s public safety department said. You can say that again.

For insight into how this is playing out on the ground, I called up Zeb Smathers, the Democratic mayor of Canton, a town of roughly 4,500 people in Haywood County that got waylaid by Helene. Canton was in a telecommunications blackout for several days following the storm, and the town only just emerged from a water boil advisory. When I caught up with Smathers on Saturday, he and his wife were smoking some pork butts in their yard for friends and neighbors affected by the floods and storm damage. He told me that while FEMA’s response hasn’t been perfect, the feds are doing the best they can—along with local officials, the Red Cross, and church groups—to navigate washed-out roads and bring supplies and relief to some of the state’s most remote communities. But their efforts, Smathers told me, are being hampered by an epidemic of disinformation and disaster porn that’s been coursing through his town and others in recent days, making it harder for North Carolina to dig its way out of the mud. (The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.)

Zeb Smathers: Yes. But I think there’s limitations with FEMA. And I think state help has definitely been more direct. But FEMA is on the ground. They’re trying things. I mean, I’m seeing it with my own eyes. They helped us with our telecommunications problems. I’m having conversations with them. There has been progress. We are recovering, we are stabilizing. We are helping each other out. There has been an outpouring of love between communities, between counties.

What worries me is that even just in the last 24 hours, I’m starting to get phone calls and see things that are alarming me. Things that aren’t true. Some of it is expected. Canton and Haywood County, we went through this three years ago with Tropical Storm Fred. This was worse, but we saw a lot of similar things. We saw massive flooding. We saw death. And by the way, Joe Biden was in the White House, and it took three weeks to get our FEMA [disaster] declaration. I raised a lot of hell back then. So this time, everybody wanted FEMA here, and then we got FEMA here! But people were still upset. I heard someone this morning, saying, “Oh, they only gave me $700.” And I’m telling people, “Guys, that’s not the whole deal. That’s the initial pop.”

Look, FEMA has issues. There’s definitely people down here that spell FEMA with two F’s. And the best help is from the state, which is more-direct funding for recovery stuff. But FEMA is on the ground. I’ve seen them doing search and rescue. We had the National Guard beforehand, because I talked to Governor [Roy] Cooper right before the floods. There were services and things put in place as best we could. But FEMA is here. They have been here. If it was not the first day after the storm, it was the morning of the second day. Trust me, if it were true that FEMA was rolling through Haywood County and threatening to shut down relief efforts, I promise you, I would be out there raising hell like no other. But you have to give me the proof, and you show me where it’s happening, and you give me names. But until then, guys, let’s operate in facts.

You said you were seeing things and getting calls that were alarming.

There was this restaurant here that posted some stuff that was just completely wrong, and that ignited people. All of a sudden, I’m getting calls like, FEMA’s coming in and people from FEMA are saying we can’t do this or that, and they’re threatening to put us in jail. Now, not only is that absolutely the wrong information, it’s dangerous information. Someone sent me a screenshot of this post, and I had to call her back and say, “This is 100 percent not true.”

Even some of our friends, they’re getting into a black hole of disaster porn, too. And some of the misinformation is exceptionally disgusting: Some right-wing MAGA somebody put out a picture of Esther Manheimer, mayor of Asheville, a friend—and she’s Jewish—with the remark that, basically, “Yes, she is what you think,” or something of that effect. That’s what I really worry about.

You’ve talked about how disinformation is not just about misrepresenting facts or scoring political points. It also creates a spirit of negativity and distrust toward the government.

That’s part of what I think we’re seeing here. I talked to the governor about this on Friday. Whether it’s true or not, people in the western part of the state always feel like we’re left out from things, especially in Raleigh. So that’s your baseline. You already have that mistrust and feeling left out. Well, now you really do. There is also, within the west, this distrust of Asheville, and Buncombe County, for a lot of reasons. The theory is Asheville’s going to get everything—that they’re going to swallow up everything from everybody else.

We are not going back after this. It’s impossible to go back. There are towns that truly are gone. Chimney Rock. Whatever comes back is going to be different. So we have to build a new Western North Carolina while acknowledging these things. Every challenge that we had in the west just got jet fuel poured all over it. I’m very worried about housing, about affordability. It’s going to make access to housing more limited. You’re going to have people from Asheville wanting to come to other places like Haywood County, but we don’t have the infrastructure to prepare for that. This is all raising worry for people. Every day right now is a different narrative.

What I don’t like right now is that it feels like we are in this new kind of misinformation stage. In some regards, I saw some of that three years ago. I don’t know how long it lasts. This is obviously going to be worse. The way I see it, it’s one thing if you see misinformation, you’re on Facebook, your uncle posted this or that, but then the power comes back on in a few days, and the water comes back on and stability comes back. But what if you’re in a place where that doesn’t happen for months, then that’s a different story. I worry about that.

On that note, I opened Twitter before talking to you, and Clay Travis was tweeting phony A.I. pictures and talking about how Biden and Kamala are diverting money to illegal immigrants, instead of people who need it in Georgia and the Carolinas. Marjorie Taylor Greene was tweeting that the government can control the weather. Elon Musk was spreading literal lies about how relief helicopters are being diverted by the F.A.A. Steve Hilton was saying the administration doesn’t want to rescue Republicans in the area. Other blue-checkmark types are saying FEMA isn’t doing anything, or that FEMA is there, but they’re going to confiscate your property. What’s your response?

There’s a state senator here in North Carolina, Kevin Corbin. He’s a good friend. He is a Republican. And he just did a post on Facebook that went off on this stuff. He said, “Stop this conspiracy theory junk.” And I called him up and I said, “Man, you’re a patriot.” The interesting thing you are seeing is that Republicans and Democrats in North Carolina are lining up against this stuff. The mindset that it’s creating with people and the distrust—that hurts all of us. I like to say, look, I don’t mind getting lied to. I’m in law, I’m in politics. I get lied to every day. But don’t piss on my shoe and tell me it’s raining.

What about the national figures who are posting nonsense on social media?

I don’t think any of the characters or their game plans have changed. It’s just a new setting. You had Springfield. No one was eating cats and dogs. And now we are the setting. And it’s weird, because now I am literally in the movie. I had a call from a constituent and she was saying FEMA isn’t out here and asked me if I had seen them. And I said, “Yes, I have seen FEMA. I saw them here with my own eyes, okay? I shook their hand and said, ‘Thank you for being here.’ Because they were doing search and rescue.” These people in all these other places, they’re just molding a narrative around the story of the day to do something.

You have Trump and Republicans saying Democrats want to slow-walk relief efforts because it will help them in the election. North Carolina is a swing state. How do you think the storm will realistically affect turnout in Western Carolina? Are people going to be able to vote?

Here’s the reality. Buncombe County is blue, very blue. So theoretically, if Buncombe is hurting, that would help Republicans. Now, other areas are very red. I do worry about some of these people’s ability to vote. Their homes are gone. I don’t know whether they can get an absentee ballot. But on top of everything—trying to find their home, work through certain applications and insurance and all that—now you’re going to add voting to that list? I could see that becoming, for some, not a priority.

But again, Buncombe is your major population hub. It’s one of the biggest 12 counties in North Carolina. So there’s a lot of red areas, but there’s not a whole lot of population there. But again, none of this fits into the narrative. If anything, taking Buncombe County offline would be helpful to Republicans.