Communities across the Southeast, most notably in North Carolina, have spent the last several weeks trying to recover from Hurricane Helene and its aftermath. It was against this backdrop that Donald Trump visited the Tar Heel State two weeks ago and pursued a radical idea: Maybe, the former president said, he could advance his own interests by brazenly lying about the governmental response to the deadly storm.

State and local officials, including plenty of Republicans, asked him to stop deceiving the public, but he ignored the appeals — even as evidence emerged that Trump’s lies were having an adverse impact on the response to the crisis.

It was, by some measures, a genuine election-season scandal: The GOP nominee for the nation’s highest office saw devastated communities and human suffering, which inspired Trump to repeatedly lie about the heartbreaking circumstances, hoping it would advance his quest for power.

Two weeks later, he did it again. NBC News reported that the former president returned to North Carolina, where he “again made the false claim that FEMA had no money to help victims in the hurricane-stricken area because it was spending funds on migrants.”

As he’s done for weeks, Trump appeared to conflate two completely separate funds to paint a misleading picture. FEMA has dedicated disaster relief money that cannot be used for other purposes, and it was separately tasked by Congress in 2022 to disseminate money from Customs and Border Protection to help communities that received influxes of migrants.

“They spent a lot of money on bringing illegal migrants. … They don’t have any money for the people who live here,” Trump said, despite reality. “They’ve spent it on illegal migrants.”

He was, of course, lying — or more to the point, he was echoing previous lies, which he knows have been discredited, but which he continued to repeat in the hopes that it’ll benefit him personally.

Reminded that these and related conspiratorial lives have led to threats against FEMA workers in the area, Trump expressed relative indifference. “I think you have to let people know how they’re doing,” he told reporters. “If they’re doing a poor job, are we not supposed to say it?”

I’m not in a position to say whether Trump actually believes his lies, or whether he knows he’s peddling nonsense. But either way, the consequences of his dangerous lies are the same.

To be sure, I’m mindful of the broader circumstances: North Carolina is a highly competitive battleground state, and the latest polling suggests he’s effectively tied with Vice President Kamala Harris in the state. It’s hardly surprising that the Republican has concluded that he’ll say whatever he has to say, regardless of accuracy or propriety, to get ahead.

But there is a risk of a backlash. If you’re an on-the-fence North Carolinian, unsure which candidate to support, and one candidate comes to your state to lie about the response to a deadly natural disaster, would you be more or less likely to vote for that candidate?

Trump could’ve simply made an appearance and expressed his support. He instead decided to take a chance by peddling easily discredited nonsense.