As many throughout the southeast wrestle to dig out from Hurricane Helene and with Florida now bracing for Hurricane Milton, Donald Trump is making the storms a flashpoint within the presidential race.
The previous president has seized on the devastation left by Helene to launch a barrage of misinformation — together with selling false claims that FEMA spent catastrophe reduction cash on migrants that add to his already inflammatory rhetoric about immigration. Throughout visits to storm-torn states and thru social media, he has solid Kamala Harris and the Biden administration as absent and incompetent in delivering help whilst members of his personal social gathering in affected areas say in any other case.
Harris is in a trickier place as each a candidate and a vp who’s concerned in — however not the face of — the federal response to the storms. On the official aspect, the vp has traveled to 2 hard-hit states within the final week, assembly with federal emergency officers and volunteers in a bid to display her shut involvement within the authorities response.
However Harris and her marketing campaign haven’t averted getting concerned within the politics of catastrophe response. Her marketing campaign has attacked Trump repeatedly on social media, that includes clips from his rallies the place he talks about Helene or mocks Democrats’ rhetoric on local weather change. It has additionally highlighted a clip from Ken Cuccinelli — a former senior Trump homeland safety official and Venture 2025 contributor, a favourite punching bag of the marketing campaign that Trump has disavowed — talking about shrinking FEMA, warning that “their plan is to chop help for hurricane victims.”
Now, as Trump continues to perpetuate deceptive claims within the face of one other storm, Harris has begun tearing into the previous president in interviews for amplifying misinformation and her marketing campaign has launched a brand new commercial criticizing him for politicizing federal help efforts whereas he was within the White Home. And she or he has grow to be embroiled in a confrontation with Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over authorities preparations for Milton from which neither politician is prone to emerge a winner.
Amid the political storm is a disaster that federal, state and native officers are struggling to surmount, with particularly troublesome recoveries going through components of North Carolina, the place dozens are nonetheless lacking and a few communities nonetheless lack power, cell phone service and basic supplies. Perilous floods and landslides left properties in ruins, and the loss of life toll throughout the southeast has reached 232. Milton, which is spiraling ever nearer to Florida, will solely add to the injury.
“We’re a month out from an election, politics are all the time going to be part of it,” mentioned Doug Heye, a Republican strategist with deep ties to North Carolina. “However people who find themselves pushing a political agenda in these cases will not be serving to their very own voters.”
This marketing campaign isn’t the primary to be upended by hurricanes within the house stretch. FEMA’s disorganized and chaotic reduction efforts following Hurricane Andrew in 1992 proved politically pricey to then-President George H.W. Bush. Superstorm Sandy’s damaging tear via the Jap Seaboard in late October of 2012 allowed then-President Barack Obama to venture management — and relegated his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, to the sidelines.
“It actually sucked the air proper out of the room,” Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist who labored on Romney’s 2012 marketing campaign, recalled on Tuesday.
And, Williams cautioned, “it’s not useful to attempt to politicize a storm. Simply concentrate on doing what you may to assist victims. When you’re not president or the governor of Florida, it’s greatest to concentrate on charity work and staying out of the best way of the official response.”
However in a good race taking part in out in a hyper-partisan political local weather, the place the devastation is stretching throughout swing states, that’s simpler mentioned than finished.
Trump has a historical past of peddling misinformation about pure disasters, together with the time, as president, he infamously used a Sharpie to change a forecast map for Hurricane Dorian to incorrectly recommend the storm would affect Alabama. And that behavior is once more on show.
Within the days after Helene tore via the southeast — together with areas of North Carolina and Georgia which are largely Republican — Trump falsely mentioned President Joe Biden had not picked up calls from GOP Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. He promoted unsubstantiated claims that the federal authorities and North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, had been deliberately withholding help from Republican areas of the state. He has misleadingly said FEMA is only offering hurricane victims $750 in help. And he has amplified a number of different falsehoods in regards to the disaster-relief company diverting its funding to assist home undocumented immigrants — claims that mischaracterize how this system via which FEMA metes out cash to state and native governments offering shelter and companies to migrants is funded.
Federal and state officers have debunked Trump’s claims. So, too — and, maybe extra politically perilously for Trump — have members of his personal social gathering, who’ve largely praised the federal government’s efforts post-Helene and have publicly pushed again on the Republican nominee’s rhetoric. Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican who represents a portion of western North Carolina that features Asheville, for example, posted a lengthy fact check on his web site on Tuesday.
The Trump marketing campaign has launched a licensed GoFundMe web page that raised roughly $7 million and has teamed up with the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse to offer provides.
However Trump isn’t letting up on his rhetoric. With Hurricane Milton spinning towards Florida and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, the previous president — who isn’t driving out the storm in Palm Seaside — mentioned in an interview with conservative radio host Ben Shapiro on Tuesday that when he visited North Carolina, individuals informed him there was “no FEMA” and requested that he name outstanding backer Elon Musk to offer Starlink, his satellite tv for pc web service, to assist individuals talk.
“Already that is going to be an enormous one. They’re in bother with Helene in North Carolina and different locations and now you take a look at this one coming in,” Trump mentioned.
“The lady,” he mentioned, referring to Harris, “doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
His marketing campaign spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, mentioned in a press release: “The one misinformation is coming from the Biden-Harris Administration” and that “in keeping with residents on the bottom, the federal authorities’s response has, the truth is, been a catastrophe.”
Biden and his aides have dismissed the Trump marketing campaign’s criticism of the response, pointing to the general public assurances made by each Democratic and Republican governors that the administration has offered them with every part they’ve requested for.
The White Home’s choice to prioritize pushing again on misinformation across the hurricane was pushed partially by requests from governors and native politicians for assist combating the falsehoods, aides mentioned, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre emphasizing on Monday that “elected officers at each degree and on either side of the aisle” had known as for an finish to the conspiracy theories.
In press conferences and tv interviews, officers at each FEMA and the White Home have devoted the final a number of days to correcting the falsehoods and criticizing those that have amplified them. With Milton looming, officers say they concern the social media conspiracies may spiral uncontrolled, particularly if they’re once more fanned by Trump and different outstanding conservative figures, like Musk.
“If previous is prologue, it’s actual,” Biden mentioned on Tuesday about misinformation within the aftermath of Milton, accusing these spreading it of attempting “to break the administration” and calling them “unAmerican.” FEMA officers, in the meantime, mentioned Tuesday that the swirl of misinformation is discouraging to first responders and anxious it may dissuade individuals in affected areas from looking for assist.
Harris has made two journeys to areas hit by the hurricane in current days, slicing brief a marketing campaign bus tour final week to go to Georgia and later touring to North Carolina. Harris in the course of the North Carolina cease praised native officers for his or her response efforts and visited a volunteer middle on the bottom.
She didn’t deal with Trump on the time. However since then, Harris has taken purpose repeatedly at her rival over his makes an attempt to sow doubt in regards to the response. The vp’s marketing campaign launched a new ad across swing states that options former Trump administration officers slamming the Republican nominee for hesitating to offer catastrophe reduction to Democratic areas whereas president. And Harris, in a collection of pre-scheduled interviews on Tuesday, slammed Trump’s perpetuating of misinformation as callous and the “peak of irresponsibility.”
“The concept that someone could be taking part in political video games for the sake of himself — however that is so constant about Donald Trump,” Harris mentioned on “The View.” “He places himself earlier than the wants of others. I concern that he actually lacks empathy, on a really primary degree, to care in regards to the struggling of different individuals.”
Kimberly Leonard and Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.
