Vice President Kamala Harris and the White House criticized Donald Trump for his attacks on the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton and suggested he was wrongly trying to turn the deadly storms to his political advantage.
Attending a town hall sponsored by Univision in Las Vegas, Harris was asked about complaints that federal officials have bungled disaster recovery efforts. She responded, “In this crisis — like in so many issues that affect the people of our country — I think it is important that leadership recognizes the dignity” to which people are entitled.
“I have to stress that this is not a time for people to play politics,” Harris added.
Those comments came after the former president spoke at the Detroit Economic Club, offering sympathy to people affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the latter of which came ashore in Florida on Wednesday night. But Trump also suggested that the Biden administration’s response had been lacking, particularly in North Carolina after Helene.
Trump has for several days promoted falsehoods about the federal response.
Harris, who visited Georgia and North Carolina after Helene, virtually attended a briefing in the White House Situation Room with President Biden on emergency efforts in Milton’s wake. In subsequent comments to reporters, Biden criticized Trump and his supporters for spreading misinformation about federal assistance available to victims.
“They’re being so damn un-American with the way they’re talking about this stuff,” Biden said, then adding directly to Trump: “Get a life, man. Help these people.”
Despite the storm, Trump and Harris are both visiting key swing states strategically, trying to increase support with key voting blocs who could decide an election expected to be exceedingly close.
In Michigan, where he’s looking to appeal primarily to blue-collar voters, Trump took a swipe at the city he happened to be campaigning in, suggesting that Detroit was “a mess.”
“Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president,” he said of Harris. “You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”
Harris responded that Trump “yet again has trashed another great American city when he was in Detroit, which is just a further piece of evidence on a very long list of why he is unfit to be president of the United States.”
Associated Press writers Volmert reported from Detroit, Superville from Las Vegas and Weissert from Washington. AP writers Christopher Rugaber, Josh Boak and Linley Sanders in Washington, Anna Johnson in Chandler, Ariz., and Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contributed to this report.