As the death toll and devastation from Hurricane Helene soars in the southeast, both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are being briefed by officials on Monday, as the destructive storm is smack in the middle of the White House race with just over five weeks until Election Day.
Trump made a stop in Valdosta, Georgia, to receive a briefing on the devastation, assist with relief distribution, deliver remarks, and take a few questions from reporters.
“I’ve come to Valdosta with large semi-trucks, many of them, filled with relief aid. A tanker truck filled up with gasoline, a couple of big tanker trucks filled up with gasoline, which they can’t get now. And we’ll be working to distribute it throughout the day,” Trump highlighted.
Harris headed back to Washington, D.C., on Monday morning, cutting short a western campaign swing. The White House said the vice president would travel to Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters once she arrives in the nation’s capital, where she will be briefed on the impact of the hurricane and the federal response to support rescue and recovery efforts.
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Over 120 people have been killed by Helene since the hurricane made landfall in Florida late Thursday before tearing a path of destruction through the interior Southeast. The storm sparked millions of power outages and billions of dollars in property damage as it smashed through the southern Appalachian Mountains and into the Tennessee Valley.
SCENES FROM THE STORM’S PATH OF DESTRUCTION
Among the hardest hit states were North Carolina and Georgia, two of the seven key battlegrounds whose razor-thin margins decided President Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump and are expected to determine the outcome of the 2024 showdown between Harris and Trump.
Trump at a Sunday rally in battleground Pennsylvania took aim at the administration and Harris over the storm, accusing the president of “sleeping” at his beach house in Delaware as the storm blasted the Southeast.
And speaking with reporters as he arrived in Valdosta, the former president charged that “the federal government is not being responsive.”
Trump was briefed by FEMA as well as state and local officials. And he toured a furniture store heavily damaged by the storm.
But after criticizing the federal storm response minutes earlier, Trump said in remarks to a larger crowd assembled that “at a time like this when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need, we’re not talking about politics now. We all need to get together and get this solved.”
Biden returned to the nation’s capital on Sunday afternoon to monitor federal relief efforts.
The White House noted that over 3,300 federal workers have been deployed to support storm response efforts in the impacted states, and at least 50,000 personnel from across the country and Canada are responding to the massive power outages in affected areas.
Biden told reporters the federal government is giving states “everything we have” to assist with their response to the storm and that “we’re not leaving until the job is done.”
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Biden said he would tour the storm-damaged areas later this week as long as his presence on the ground would not hamper rescue and recovery efforts.
“I’m committed to traveling to the impacted areas as soon as possible, but I’ve been told that it would be disruptive if I did it right now. We will not do that at the risk of diverting or delaying any of the response assets needed to deal with this crisis,” he told reporters on Monday.
Trump, at his Sunday rally, attacked Harris for attending “fundraising events with her radical left lunatic donors” in California this weekend. He argued that Harris “ought to be down in the area” where the storm caused destruction.
On Monday, Trump repeated the dig, saying “the vice president, she’s out someplace campaigning looking for money.”
The White House said Harris spoke Sunday with the governors of Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina and that “the Vice President intends to visit impacted communities as soon as it is possible without disrupting emergency response operations.”
In a Saturday statement, Harris said that she and the president “remain committed to ensuring that no community or state has to respond to this disaster alone.”
The response by elected officials to natural disasters can vastly impact their political fortunes on the campaign trail.
Trump faced criticism early in his White House tenure as Puerto Rico struggled to recover from a powerful storm. The then-president was criticized for throwing paper towels to the crowd as he stopped by a relief center during a storm-related visit to the island.
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