As President Biden After spending a second consecutive day surveying the damage and reporting on recovery and relief efforts in the storm-ravaged Southeast, he is once again coming under political attack from former President Trump.
As the death toll from Hurricane Helen reaches nearly 200 people, hundreds are still missing, millions are still without power or running water, and damage estimates run into the billions. Trump took help of social media Thursday morning to portray Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as incompetent.
“Kamala and Sleepy Joe are being given bad grades for the way they are handling the storm, especially in North Carolina,” Trump alleged in a social media post. “This is going down at the federal level as the worst and most inefficiently managed ‘storm’ ever seen.”
Trump, who is locked in a margin-of-error race with Harris with less than five weeks until Election Day in November, has been attacking the vice president and his boss over the federal response to the powerful storm for nearly a week.
Biden, Harris visit Southeast to inspect storm damage
Former President Trump visits Valdosta, Georgia, a city affected by Hurricane Helene, on Monday, September 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Ivan Vucci)
And two of the hardest-hit states — North Carolina and Georgia — are two of the seven key battleground states that will likely determine the outcome. 2024 presidential election, The storm has moved front and center in the race for the White House.
Last weekend Trump accused the president of “sleeping” at his beach house in Delaware as the storm ravaged the Southeast.
North Carolina residents are fighting for their survival
And as soon as he came inside he talked to the journalists Valdosta, GeorgiaOn Monday, the former president alleged that “the federal government is not being held accountable” for surveying the damage caused by the storm and providing relief assistance.
And he falsely claimed Biden had not spoken to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a conservative Republican.
Countering the political attacks, Biden has said he was on the phone with federal, state and local officials throughout the weekend and returned to the nation’s capital on Sunday afternoon to oversee hurricane rescue and relief efforts.
“We had over 1,000 federal personnel, including search and rescue teams, prepared on the ground before it hit,” the president said Tuesday. “Over the past several days, I have been in regular contact with governors, mayors, county officials and all affected areas. This includes Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Virginia.
And Biden stressed that his administration has “sent every available resource we have to the affected area” and pledged that “we’ll be there until this job is done.”
For the latest Fox News reporting on Helen’s havoc go here
More than half of the deaths caused by hurricanes occur here North Carolina, Where entire communities in the western part of the state were destroyed by rapidly rising waters.
As flood waters from the storm receded, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper lamented that, in the western part of his state, “communities were wiped off the map.”
President Biden and Governor Roy Cooper welcome first responders after visiting areas affected by Hurricane Helene at the airport in Greenville, South Carolina, Wednesday, October 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
The president was in North Carolina on Wednesday, where he surveyed the damage from a helicopter flight over the city of Asheville, one of the hardest-hit areas. Biden also visited a rescue command center in the state before stopping in neighboring South Carolina.
Speaking during a Cabinet meeting focused on the federal response, Biden told reporters Tuesday, “My top priority is to make sure the communities devastated by this storm get aid and support as quickly as possible.”
And the President greenlighted the use of 1,000 active duty troops to support relief efforts ahead of his visit to the region.
And meeting with Democratic and Republican politicians from the region on Wednesday, Biden emphasized that “in a moment like this, we put politics aside, at least we should put it aside. We have There is – there are no Democrats or Republicans, there are only Americans – our job is to help as many people as we can, as quickly and as well as possible.”
Trump on Sunday attacked Harris for attending “fundraising events with her radical leftist crazy donors” in California over the weekend. And he argued that Harris “should live in the area” where the storm caused destruction.
During a stop in Georgia on Monday, Trump repeated the sarcasm, saying, “Vice President, she’s out campaigning looking for money.”
The White House highlighted that the vice president was on the phone with federal, state and local officials over the weekend.
Harris said Saturday that she and the president “are committed to ensuring that no community or state has to respond to this disaster alone.”
on monday, Harris visits FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) headquartered in Washington, DC, where they received information on relief and rescue efforts.
“We will do everything in our power to help communities respond and recover,” Harris pledged.
Harris traveled to Georgia on Wednesday to survey the storm’s impacts and receive briefings on the ground and provide updates on the federal response.
“We are here for the long term,” Harris told residents in Augusta, Georgia. “There is a lot of work that needs to be done in the coming days, weeks and months, and the coordination we have dedicated ourselves to is the best way to get families back, residents back, neighborhoods back up and running.”
Harris was originally scheduled to participate in a campaign bus swing through central Pennsylvania, another key battleground state, on Wednesday with her fellow Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
With the vice president headed to Georgia, Walz led the bus tour, which came a day after he faced off in a running mate debate against GOP vice presidential nominee Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio.
During his Monday stop in Georgia, Trump highlighted that “I’ve come to Valdosta with large semi-trucks, many of them filled with relief aid. A tanker truck filled with gasoline, some large Tanker trucks are filled with gasoline.” “What they can’t get right now and we’ll be working to deliver it throughout the day.”
And a GoFundMe page set up by the Trump campaign earlier this week has raised more than $4 million so far for hurricane victims.
“I am committed to traveling to the affected areas as soon as possible, but I have been told that if I did it now it would be disruptive. We will not do so at the risk of diverting or delaying any response to this crisis. assets needed to deal with,” Biden told reporters on Monday.
And Harris said Tuesday, “My plan is to get on the ground as quickly as possible — but as quickly as possible without disrupting any emergency response operations, because that must be the top priority and first order of business.”
Vice President Kamala Harris welcomes people affected by Hurricane Helene in Augusta, Georgia, on Wednesday, October 2, 2024, while Augusta Mayor Garnett Johnson looks on at right. (AP Photo/Caroline Caster)
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But Trump’s Monday stop in Georgia likely will put some political pressure on Biden and Harris.
Longtime Republican strategist David Kochel said Trump was “very aggressive” in his quick visit to the storm-damaged area.
“I think they put a lot of pressure on him to try to do something,” Kotchel, a veteran of several GOP presidential campaigns, told Fox News. “He’s putting out a line there that they don’t care about – they’re not doing anything and I think they’re reacting to it.”
The response of elected officials to natural disasters can affect their political standing.
President George W. Bush was heavily criticized for his initial response to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in the summer of 2005.
And Trump faced criticism early in his White House tenure as Puerto Rico struggled to recover from a powerful hurricane. The President was criticized for throwing paper towels into the crowd when he stopped at an relief center during a hurricane-related trip to the island.
