By CHARLOTTE — Vice President Kamala Harris took her second trip in four days to a hurricane-ravaged state, meeting with victims and first responders in North Carolina on Saturday as the administration combats criticism and false claims that its storm response is too anemic.
Fresh off a Midwest campaign swing, Harris visited a North Carolina Air National Guard base at Charlotte’s airport, where she received a briefing alongside a phalanx of state elected officials. The guard has airlifted more than 100,000 pounds of food to parts of the state most heavily affected by Hurricane Helene.
“The work that’s happening here that is so positively impacting so many people is really an example of the best we can do when we bring resources together at the federal, state and local level — and tap into the kind of collegiality that produces results,” she said before the briefing.
She noted that she had spoken with many of the officials at the table earlier as Helene was doing its worst damage. “I think that these moments of crisis bring out some of the best of who we could be and who we are,” Harris continued.
Harris also met with a family that temporarily relocated from western North Carolina to Charlotte with their 6-month-old child, and another person who helped with “lifesaving recovery efforts during flooding,” according to the vice president’s office.
Natural disasters, particularly hurricanes, have been a litmus test for presidential administrations, reflecting their competence — or lack thereof — in a crisis.
With a month to go until the presidential election, former president Donald Trump has sought to weaponize criticisms of the Biden administration’s response, sometimes with blatant and easily debunked falsehoods, tying what he asserts is a lackluster response to one of the most incendiary issue in America: immigration.
Harris has strove to show herself as a leader firmly in control in a crisis, appearing on camera to talk about efforts to speed aid to where it’s needed most and visiting shelters to comfort victims. On Wednesday, Harris traveled to Augusta, Ga., to survey the damage there.
Helene made landfall Thursday and carved a path of destruction through six states, killing more than 200 people in one of the deadliest storms in modern times. The toll was especially high in the western mountains of North Carolina.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said Saturday afternoon that 68 people were killed in the state, most around the city of Asheville. On Saturday, Harris announced that Mecklenburg County, which includes the state’s largest city of Charlotte, had been added to the federal disaster declaration.
But there are elements of political calculus in the humanitarian crisis. Two of the hardest hit places — North Carolina and Georgia — are battleground states coveted by both parties in a race that is essentially tied. And Trump has sought to fan concerns about the federal government’s response as a political cudgel.
During a Thursday campaign rally in Michigan, another battleground state, Trump falsely asserted that the government could not adequately fund the storm response because it had used Federal Emergency Management Agency money on migrants “who came into the country illegally.” He claimed the White House is missing a billion dollars that was used for migrants.
There is no evidence that the Biden administration has used money on migrants; in reality, in 2019, the Trump administration told Congress that it was taking $271 million from Department of Homeland Security programs, including $155 million from the disaster fund, to pay for immigration detention space.
Trump also kept up his rhetoric Friday and Saturday on his social networking site, Truth Social. “People are rightfully disgusted with the White House response. Worst since Katrina,” read one post. A day later, he shared a clip from Fox News’s Sean Hannity about “the worst Federal Hurricane response in the history of our Country,” which Hannity’s show dubbed, alliteratively, “Kamala’s Katrina.”
On Saturday, the vice president’s office released details about the government response to Helene in North Carolina, which includes providing more than $26 million in housing and other assistance to more than 25,000 households in the state. FEMA has also shipped 5.4 million meals and 6.3 million liters of water to the state. More than 700 FEMA staff are on the ground, and urban search-and-rescue personnel have saved or supported over 3,000 survivors.
“FEMA has been on the ground with us from the very beginning of this,” Harris said.
On Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the case for additional funding from Congress for hurricane relief. But that money, he said, was to help contend with future storms, not the current relief effort.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas said. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.” The latest forecasts are calling for a major hurricane to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast midweek.
In a memo, the White House warned that the former president’s words could keep victims from seeking the help they need — and slammed Trump’s statements as “poison.” FEMA has launched an anti-rumor tool to counter the claims.
Harris, for her part, has sought to debunk the distortions with her physical presence. She canceled a planned bus tour through Pennsylvania to instead travel to an area that had been all-but-flattened by Helene. Biden has made stops to storm-battered areas in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida as well.
During each visit, Harris has sought to assure victims that federal help will be there for as long as they need.
