Harris visits Hurricane Helene-ravaged North Carolina as Trump makes a triumphant return to Butler

US Vice President Kamala Harris took her second trip in four days to a state ravaged by Hurricane Helene. On Saturday, the Democratic presidential nominee met victims and first responders in North Carolina as US President Joe Biden’s administration tries to combat criticisms and claims that their response to the storm is too anaemic.

Harris paid a trip to 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 been responsible for lifting 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 during the briefing, T_he Washington Post_ reported.

Harris meets the storm-affected families

During the meeting, the vice president noted that she had spoken with many of the officials at the table earlier while the hurricane was wreaking havoc in the southeastern US states. “I think that these moments of crisis bring out some of the best of who we could be and who we are,” Harris continued.

The 59-year-old prosecutor-turned-politician also met a family who had to temporarily relocate 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. In the past, hurricanes turned out to be a litmus test for different administrations, reflecting their competence or lack thereof in a crisis.

Last week, Trump attempted to paint Biden’s response to Hurricane Helene as “lackluster” without providing any evidence to support his claims. Helene made landfall Thursday and carved a path of destruction through six states, killing more than 200 people and is now touted as one of the deadliest storms in modern times.

Following the briefing to the vice president, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said on Saturday afternoon that at least 68 people were killed in the state due to the storm. On the same day, Harris announced that Mecklenburg County, which includes the state’s largest city of Charlotte, had been added to the federal disaster declaration.

The political side of it all

It is important to note that there is a political calculus behind Harris’s visit to storm-stricken states. The states of North Carolina and Georgia are battleground states coveted by both parties in a race that is essentially tied. While addressing a rally in Michigan, the former president falsely claimed 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.

However, there is no concrete evidence that states that the Biden administration has used that money for the migrants. In reality, the Trump administration in 2019 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, The Washington Post reported.

While Harris was visiting North Carolina, the Republican presidential nominee addressed a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the same place where he witnessed an assassination attempt against him.

While addressing the rally, Trump pledged to never quit. “Exactly 12 weeks ago this evening, on this very ground, a cold-blooded assassin aimed to silence me,” the Republican candidate told tens of thousands of supporters after taking the stage behind bulletproof glass.

Calling the gunman a “vicious monster,” Trump vowed he would “never quit… never bend… never break” to cheers of “fight, fight, fight” from the crowd. The former president was joined by billionaire Elon Musk who said that Trump “must win to save democracy.”

With inputs from agencies.