As President Joe Biden delivered a solemn warning Wednesday about Hurricane Milton \u2014 urging Floridians to heed local officials and brace for \u201cthe storm of the century\u201d \u2014 he paused before offering another admonition, one chiefly aimed at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last few weeks, there\u2019s been a reckless, irresponsible, relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies that are disturbing people,\u201d Biden said from the White House, blaming Trump for leading an \u201conslaught of lies\u201d about the storms. \u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous, and it\u2019s got to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
The moment, coming after Trump had blasted Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their disaster management and hours before Milton was set to make landfall, highlighted how two massive storm systems have collided with the final stage of the presidential campaign, amplifying the nation\u2019s sharpest political divisions as millions prepare to go to the polls.<\/p>\n
For a turbulent presidential race that has already been jolted by a felony conviction, assassination attempts and a late-stage candidate switch, the arrival of back-to-back monster hurricanes is testing the nation\u2019s political fabric even as it challenges the government\u2019s ability to mount a comprehensive response.<\/p>\n
The storms have become particularly consequential for Harris, whose truncated presidential campaign is focused on introducing herself as a steady leader in contrast to Trump\u2019s erratic governing style. In recent days, she has upended her campaign schedule to visit with victims of Hurricane Helene, joined multiple high-level briefings and held calls with local officials across the Southeast. She has also blasted Trump as selfish and \u201cextraordinarily irresponsible\u201d for peddling falsehoods about the recovery effort.<\/p>\n
Yet some of Harris\u2019s decisions \u2014 including attending splashy fundraisers and political events after Helene made landfall, and participating in lighthearted interviews as Milton was bearing down on Florida \u2014 have opened her up to criticism from opponents aiming to cast the storm recovery effort as lackluster and disjointed.<\/p>\n
As Trump was cycling through attacks over Hurricane Helene last week, often embracing falsehoods and conspiracy theories, the approach of Hurricane Milton ensured that storm politics would be a defining feature of the campaign\u2019s closing stretch, said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian. While presidential candidates may seek an edge in the aftermath of a disaster, there is risk in seeming too focused on the electoral impact at a time that has traditionally been apolitical, said Troy, author of \u201cShall We Wake The President? Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are seen as the one who\u2019s politicizing it, the negativity will redound upon you in a significant way,\u201d he said. \u201cSo there are incentives in terms of wanting to make sure the response goes right, but also that you don\u2019t want to be the one politicizing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hurricane Helene made landfall on Sept. 26, tearing through parts of Florida and Georgia before devastating much of western North Carolina. As the death toll mounted \u2014 ultimately exceeding 230 to become the deadliest hurricane since Katrina in 2005 \u2014 the Trump and Harris campaigns quickly confronted the reality that the response could shape the final weeks of the presidential race, not least because Georgia and North Carolina are among the few true battlegrounds.<\/p>\n
Trump wasted little time jumping into the fray, traveling to Georgia on Sept. 30 and launching into sharp criticism of the White House as Harris and Biden stayed away amid the early stages of the recovery, saying they did not want to interfere with recovery efforts.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s false claim that Biden had been ignoring the state\u2019s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, kicked off similar attacks. Trump and his allies would go on to claim that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had given money to migrants rather than storm victims, that Republican-leaning areas were being bypassed by the government, and that Harris had sent millions to Lebanon while limiting hurricane victims to $750.<\/p>\n
The assertions, while not based in fact, dovetailed with Trump\u2019s message about a government supposedly weaponized against conservatives and favoring foreigners over Americans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been the worst hurricane response by a president and vice president since Katrina, and this is simply not acceptable,\u201d Trump said Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania. \u201cThey\u2019re offering them $750 to people whose homes have been washed away, and yet we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of.\u201d<\/p>\n
The $750 payments, designed to defray immediate costs as claims are processed, represent just a portion of the federal funds that victims can access.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s reference to Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005, highlighted how national campaigns have collided with natural disasters throughout history. President George W. Bush\u2019s response to Katrina was widely faulted, helping the Democrats retake both chambers of Congress the following year. The government\u2019s response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was likewise seen as subpar, contributing to the defeat of his father, George H.W. Bush, months later.<\/p>\n
In contrast, President Barack Obama\u2019s handling of Superstorm Sandy, which hit much of the Eastern Seaboard in 2012, may have helped propel him to reelection.<\/p>\n
As Harris has blasted Trump for spreading misinformation about Hurricane Helene, she has leaned into her core message about him, that he is concerned only with himself. \u201cIt\u2019s about him. It\u2019s not about you,\u201d she said this week of Trump\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s campaign has calculated that a competent and compassionate response to the storms would itself refute Trump\u2019s charges, and her allies have highlighted comments by several Republican governors complimenting the administration\u2019s quick actions.<\/p>\n
The vice president, who was in California as Helene marched across the Southeast, eventually cut short her trip and returned to Washington early for a FEMA briefing. But by the time Air Force Two landed and her motorcade arrived at FEMA\u2019s headquarters, Trump had already been on the ground in Georgia.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s team believed Harris was making a mistake by not getting to Georgia and North Carolina sooner, which is one reason he rushed a trip there, said one Trump adviser who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. \u201cIt was an opportunity for us,\u201d the adviser said.<\/p>\n
Harris traveled to Georgia and North Carolina last week and met with survivors of the storm. As Hurricane Milton gathered in the Gulf of Mexico this week, Harris used a series of interviews to argue that Trump\u2019s response to the hurricane proved he lacked the empathy and temperament to be president. \u201cThe last thing that [hurricane victims] deserve is to have a so-called leader make them more afraid than they already are,\u201d she said on CNN.<\/p>\n
While many of Trump\u2019s assertions about the response were false, FEMA has faced genuine problems. FEMA employees have struggled to reach some of Helene\u2019s victims, especially in remote, mountainous parts of North Carolina. And the sheer extent of the area struck by the storm, covering six states, has strained the agency\u2019s capacity.<\/p>\n
While some Democrats saw the storms as an opportunity to highlight the role of climate change, Harris has not broached the topic. Scientists agree that Helene and Milton owe their ferocity in large part to unusually high water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n
But Harris, locked in a tight race with Trump in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, whose economies in different ways rely heavily on fossil fuels, has kept a low profile when it comes to aggressive climate strategies, and the storms so far have not changed that.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the vice president released a statement warning against price gouging, which has been one of the themes of her campaign\u2019s push against inflation. Harris\u2019s campaign has also released an ad featuring former Trump administration officials who criticized him for politicizing past disasters.<\/p>\n
As the White House has pushed back against misinformation, it has received some help from Republicans in affected areas who fear conspiracy theories will hamper the recovery effort. Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents hard-hit western North Carolina, released a lengthy statement Tuesday debunking \u201cHelene response myths,\u201d including some of the claims that Trump has espoused.<\/p>\n
\u201cFEMA has NOT diverted disaster response funding to the border or foreign aid,\u201d he wrote, in a statement that also clarified that the storm had not been engineered by the government.<\/p>\n
But Edwards also asserted that the FEMA response \u201chas had its shortfalls,\u201d and some criticisms of the Biden administration\u2019s handling of Helene have been more polished than Trump\u2019s allegations or hoaxes spreading online. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Trump\u2019s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, criticized Biden and Harris for not activating the military more quickly to reach hard-hit areas in North Carolina after the storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cShortly after Helene made landfall in the U.S. on Sept. 26, Joe Biden was at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Del. Vice President Kamala Harris was flying between ritzy California fundraisers, hobnobbing with celebrities,\u201d Vance wrote. \u201cThe lack of prioritization had real-world ramifications.\u201d<\/p>\n
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was asked about disinformation at his morning press briefing Wednesday, specifically a tweet telling residents not to evacuate and citing supposed shenanigans by FEMA. DeSantis scoffed.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen, I think most people are wise to this,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know, we live in an era where if you put out crap online, you can get a lot of people to share it and you can monetize that. That\u2019s just the way it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeSantis also clashed with Harris this week after reports emerged that he refused to accept her call ahead of Helene. During a news conference, DeSantis denied that he had declined her call but suggested that the vice president was being \u201cselfish\u201d and aiming to score political points.<\/p>\n
Harris, in turn, told reporters that DeSantis was being \u201cutterly irresponsible.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is too early to know if the storms will have a significant electoral impact, but both campaigns have begun gaming out how votes in key hurricane-ravaged states could shift.<\/p>\n
Trump campaign employees are trying to decipher how many of their likely voters are affected in North Carolina and Georgia \u2014 a number some aides believe is in the hundreds of thousands \u2014 and how to get them to vote. They have been particularly worried about North Carolina, where the flooding hit a number of areas where Trump has strong support.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Milton is also having a more immediate impact on Trump\u2019s operation. His campaign office in Palm Beach, Fla., is a \u201cghost town\u201d with people evacuating for safer spaces ahead of the storm, an adviser said. Employees have been told to go somewhere safe.<\/p>\n
The political swiping in some sense has demonstrated how much the country has changed since 2012, when Obama and then-Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey (R) shared a bipartisan embrace after Sandy decimated the Garden State, Troy said.<\/p>\n
Mike DuHaime, a GOP political consultant who was one of Christie\u2019s top advisers during that storm, said the infighting ahead of Hurricane Milton was \u201cdangerous\u201d for the candidates involved. \u201cThere are a few moments where the public expects you to put your politics aside, and that\u2019s one of them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nick Iarossi, a Florida lobbyist close to DeSantis, said that despite the burst of partisan rhetoric, those in charge are behaving responsibly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe the Republican governors are communicating well with the feds, and that President Biden is also being cooperative in getting federal resources to help,\u201d Iarossi said. \u201cThe governors and the president are not playing politics. That\u2019s the silver lining in all this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patrick Svitek and Lori Rozsa contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
As President Joe Biden delivered a solemn warning Wednesday about Hurricane Milton \u2014 urging Floridians to heed local officials and brace for \u201cthe storm of the century\u201d \u2014 he paused before offering another admonition, one chiefly aimed at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. \u201cThe last few weeks, there\u2019s been a reckless, irresponsible, relentless promotion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10876,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}