GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) — 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.
The vice president spoke at Koinonia Christian Center about the “heroes” 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.”
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 because it all was spent on programs to help immigrants who are in the United States illegally.
He pressed that argument on the Fox News Channel, saying the White House's storm response was “absolutely terrible” and repeating the claim about FEMA's funding. “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 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 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.
The vice president later spoke to about 7,000 supporters at a Sunday afternoon rally at East Carolina University's arena, suggesting that Trump's team has stopped him from releasing medical records or debating her again because they might be “afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable.”
The North Carolina appearances mark the start of a week that will find Harris working to shore up support among Black voters, a key constituency for the Democratic Party. She is counting on Black turnout in competitive states such as North Carolina to help her defeat Trump, who has focused on energizing men of all races and has tried to make inroads with Black men in particular.
On Tuesday, she will appear in Detroit for a live conversation with Charlamagne tha God, a prominent Black media personality.
Black registered voters have overwhelmingly favorable views of Harris and negative views of Trump despite his attempts to appeal to nonwhite voters, according to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But the poll also shows that many Black voters aren’t sure whether Harris would improve the country overall or better their own lives.
In Florida, where Biden had visited the Big Bend region 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 & 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 criticized 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 had caused an estimated $50 billion in damage.
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 funding when Congress comes back into session after the Nov. 5 election.
“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 customers 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 convince many people to flee.