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GOP Congressman Pleads For Reason on Lithium Conspiracy Government Plot

by in Daily Edition | October 10, 2024

Chimney Rock, a symbol of North Carolina

Chimney Rock, a symbol of North Carolina, photo: Ehume, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

North Carolina Congressman Chuck Edwards represents some of the areas in the Western part of the state that were hardest hit by Hurricane Helene as it whirled through the Southeastern U.S. last week.

But it is a second storm — the storm of misinformation — that Edwards has had to take time away from his relief efforts to debunk.

Responding to the disinformation targeting his constituents, Edwards sought to combat raging conspiracy theories that actively hindered recovery efforts, including writing on X that, among other wild conjectures, Hurricane Helene was “NOT geoengineered by the government.”

Edwards could not say the same about the second storm, as members and former members of the U.S. government did help to engineer the storm of conspiracy theories that walloped North Carolina in Helene’s aftermath, spreading false rumors that Edwards called “outrageous.”

That storm of manufactured disinformation included a barrage of false insinuations by former President Donald Trump and a particularly egregious instance where Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) suggested that the government — which she said can “control” the weather — created the storm to punish and disenfranchise right-leaning citizens.

[NOTE: On CBS, Scott MacFarlane points out how enervating it is, amidst the chaos of recovery, for Edwards to have to battle both the results of the disinformation and the real storm’s topographic devastation.]

“Hurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the government to seize and access lithium deposits in Chimney Rock,” Edwards wrote, addressing the deeper level of conspiracy that had sneaked into the theory — a notion that the federal government hoped to displace North Carolinians in order to take possession of an area rich in lithium, the element critical for batteries.

“Local officials have confirmed the government is NOT seizing Chimney Rock,” Edwards wrote, pleading for a basic level of reason about an iconic North Carolina area that has been devastated by Helene.