As Hurricane Milton approaches Florida, Trump and Republicans are spreading conspiracy theories

This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 8 Episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”

Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall in Florida early Thursday. The National Hurricane Center advises Florida residents to “prepare their families and homes and evacuate if ordered to do so.” Storm surge warnings have been in effect for almost the entire west coast of the state since Wednesday.

Meteorologists expect Milton to hit the coast with winds well over 100 miles per hour, rainfall totals of 10 inches and a coastal storm surge of up to 10 feet in some areas.

John Morales, a meteorologist for Miami's local NBC affiliate NBC 6 South Florida, was left in stitches as he delivered a devastating report on the storm Monday evening.

“You can imagine the winds — I mean, the seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot,” Morales told viewers. “Record hot, as you can imagine. You know what's driving this, I don't have to tell you: global warming. Climate change is leading to this and becoming an increasing threat.”

As Morales said, we know why this is happening. Climate change is making our earth and our oceans hotter. The Gulf of Mexico has experienced record warm waters this year. And those higher temperatures lead to stronger storms with stronger winds, more rain and worse flooding. The storm essentially absorbs the heat and uses it as energy. It's like putting dynamite in a bomb.

Hurricane Helene just showed us how devastating this phenomenon is, even in areas previously considered safe from such storms, like Asheville, North Carolina.

New research found strong evidence that human-caused climate change increased Helene's destructive power. According to one study, this made the storm's rainfall up to 20% heavier and its winds 7% stronger. Another report found that a warmer climate resulted in 50% more rain than expected in parts of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

Storms like Helene and what we expect from Milton are exactly what experts have been screaming about for decades, as Morales told Nicolle Wallace in Deadline White House. He said that's why he became so emotional during the prediction.

“I just broke down in a mix of empathy, fear — about these increasing extreme weather events — and also frustration,” Morales said Tuesday. “For over 20 years I have been trying to communicate what would happen if we did not curb the entry of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And well, here we are and things aren’t going to get any better.”

That's why we're now preparing for the second major climate change-driven hurricane in two weeks, which could put a dangerous strain on federal resources.

The New York Times reports: “The Federal Emergency Management Agency is running out of staff to deal with the potential devastation from Hurricane Milton.” According to the Times, as of Monday morning, “only 9% of FEMA staff…were available to respond to the hurricane or to respond to other disasters.”

While FEMA says it is “well-equipped to deal with the stresses,” it is a reminder of the challenge of more common natural disasters. Like the Times notes that FEMA workers are currently “also responding to floods and landslides in Vermont, tornadoes in Kansas, the aftermath of Tropical Storm Debby in New York and Georgia, and the Watch Fire in Arizona.” And those are just the disasters in the were declared last two weeks.”

Remember, we are facing this as global temperatures are just over 1 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial average. Now imagine what it will look like when we reach 2 degrees? Or 3? Or 4? This is the world Donald Trump would push us into more quickly if he returns to the White House.

Not that he cares. Trump thinks that would be good for real estate values. In September, he joked about climate change at a town hall in Flint, Michigan, claiming that nuclear weapons were a bigger threat than global warming. He also said sea level rise was a “good thing” and gave residents “more oceanfront properties.” ”

We have known for decades that our planet is warming and that we will see the brutal effects. But conservatives are so deep in their denial that they look for anyone or anything else to blame.

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia pushes a baseless conspiracy theory about a mysterious “they” controlling the weather, suggesting that “they” are sending hurricanes to Republican areas to influence the election. And now it's being amplified by right-wing media and the Republican candidate himself, who mentioned the wrong thing Claim made during a rally in Wisconsin on Sunday.

Trump's vice president, Senator JD Vance, even found a way to shift the blame to immigrants. “You have FEMA, which is there to provide disaster relief for American citizens after a terrible storm, and has been deployed again and again to deal with Kamala Harris' wide-open border and the migrant invasion that it has caused,” Vance told Newsmax on Monday.

“This lack of focus on their core mission, this distraction and focus on illegal immigrants – I guarantee this has made disaster relief worse.”

This is wrong; Both FEMA and the White House dispute these claims, saying the disaster relief fund is completely independent of other programs. But of course it's not really surprising that conservatives react this way. After decades of denial, they would never recognize the real impact of climate change and declare, “Okay, we were wrong!” But their behavior should serve as a wake-up call to everyone about the dire consequences of this looming one-two punch for the Southeast and make them realize what is happening what is really at stake in this election.