By Josh Boak, Aamer Madhani and Darlene Superville | Associated Press
GREENVILLE, N.C. — Kamala Harris used an appearance Sunday before a largely Black church audience in battleground North Carolina to call out Donald Trump for spreading misinformation about the government’s hurricane response. President Joe Biden visited Florida for the second time this month to survey storm damage.
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, did not speak Trump’s name, but he is most prominent among those promoting false claims about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricanes Milton and Helene. Florida was in the path of both storms, which also hit North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
The vice president spoke at Koinonia Christian Center about the “heroes” all around helping residents without regard to political affiliation.
“Yet, church, there are some who are not acting in the spirit of community, and I am speaking of these who have been literally not telling the truth, lying about people who are working hard to help the folks in need, spreading disinformation when the truth and facts are required,” Harris said.
“The problem with this, beyond the obvious, is it’s making it harder, then, to get people life-saving information if they’re led to believe they cannot trust,” she said. “And that’s the pain of it all, which is the idea that those who are in need have somehow been convinced that the forces are working against them in a way that they would not seek aid.”
Harris said their motives are transparent, “to gain some advantage for themselves, to play politics with other people’s heart break, and it is unconscionable,” she said. “Now is not a time to incite fear. It is not right to make people feel alone.”
“That is not what leaders, as we know, do in crisis,” she said.
Trump made a series of false claims after Helene struck in late September, including saying that Washington was intentionally withholding aid from Republicans in need across the Southeast. The former president falsely claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency had run out of money to help them because it all was spent on programs to help immigrants who are in the United States illegally.
He pressured that argument on Fox News Channel, saying the White House’s storm response was “absolutely terrible” and repeating the claim about FEMA’s dollars. “It came out from there and everybody knew it,” Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday and was taped Thursday.
Before Harris spoke in church, Biden was surveying hurricane damage on a helicopter flight between Tampa and St. Pete Beach on the Gulf Coast. From the air, he saw the torn-up roof of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. On the ground, the president saw waterlogged household furnishings piled up outside flooded homes. Some had collapsed.
The president said he was thankful that Milton was not as bad as officials had anticipated, but that it still was a “cataclysmic” event for those in the storm’s path, including many who lost irreplaceable personal items. He also praised the first responders, some of whom had come from Canada.
“It’s in moments like this we come together to take care of each other, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans,” Biden said after he was briefed by federal, state and local officials, and met with some residents and responders. “We are one United States, one United States.
Harris opened her second day in North Carolina by speaking at the church in Greenville as part of her campaign’s “Souls to the Polls” effort to help turn out Black churchgoers before the Nov. 5 election.
She planned a rally later Sunday to talk about her economic plans and highlight Thursday’s start of early voting in the state, her campaign said.
In Florida, which Biden had visited the Big Bend region on Oct. 3 after Helene struck, the president announced $612 million for six Department of Energy projects in hurricane-affected areas to bolster the region’s electric grid. The money includes $47 million for Gainesville Regional Utilities and $47 million for Switched Source to partner with Florida Power and Light.
With a little more than three weeks before the election, the hurricanes have added another dimension to the closely contested presidential race.
Trump has said the Biden administration’s storm response was lacking, particularly in western North Carolina after Helene. Biden and Harris have hammered Trump for promoting falsehoods about the federal response.
Biden said Trump was “not singularly” to blame for the spread of misinformation but that he has the “biggest mouth.”
“They blame me for everything. It’s OK,” Trump told Fox.
Biden has pressed for Congress to act quickly to make sure the Small Business Administration and FEMA have the money they need to get through hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30 in the Atlantic. He said Friday that Milton alone had caused an estimated $50 billion in damages.
FEMA is part of the Homeland Security Department, and Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the hurricane season is far from over and there are other natural disasters for which the agency must ready.
“We don’t know what’s coming tomorrow, whether it’s another hurricane, a tornado, a fire, an earthquake. We have to be ready. And it is not good government to be dependent on a day-to-day existence as opposed to appropriate planning,” Mayorkas said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said there was plenty of time and that lawmakers would address the funding issue when Congress comes back into session after the Nov. 5 election.
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“We’ll provide the additional resources,” Johnson told CBS.
Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening. At least 10 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of residents remain without power.
Officials say the toll could have been worse if not for widespread evacuations. The still-fresh devastation from Helene just two weeks earlier probably helped compel many people to flee.
Madhani reported from St. Pete Beach, Florida, and Superville from Washington.