Vice President Kamala Harris slammed Donald Trump on Tuesday, calling his false claims about FEMA’s response to the storms in the Southeast “irresponsible”.
“It’s profound and it is the height of irresponsibility and, frankly, callousness,” Harris said on ABC’s “The View”. “Lives are literally at stake right now.”
Harris visited both North Carolina and Georgia, describing the moments she met with those impacted by the storm.
“People are losing their home with no hope of ever being able to reconstruct or return, and the idea that somebody would be playing political games for the sake of himself — but this is so consistent about Donald Trump,” she said. “He puts himself before the needs of others. I fear that he really lacks empathy on a very basic level to care about suffering of other people and understand the role of a leader is not to beat people down, it’s to lift people up.”
After NBC News reported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declined a call from Harris regarding the hurricane recovery, he later claimed her storm response was out of political motivation.
“She has no role in this,” DeSantis said on Fox News Monday. “In fact, she’s been vice president for three-and-a-half years. I’ve dealt with a number of storms under this administration. She has never contributed anything to any of these efforts, and so what I think is selfish is trying to blunder into this.”
DeSantis later said that he was not aware of the vice president’s call.
“I have called and talked within the course of this crisis, this most recent crisis, Democrat and Republican governors — called, taken the call, answered the call, had a conversation,” Harris said. “So, obviously this is not an issue that is about partisanship or politics for certain leaders but maybe is for others.”
President Joe Biden on Tuesday also criticized the spreading misinformation about FEMA, spearheaded by Trump, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, calling it “un-American.”
“It puts people in certain things where they panic. Where they really, really, really worry,” Biden said. “They think we’re not being taken care of. And it really is — that’s going to sound, I’m gonna use an old phrase, it’s un-American. It really is. People are scared to death.”
The comments from Biden and Harris come after Trump falsely claimed that the administration is using disaster funds on immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally rather than Americans impacted by disasters.
“No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. None. FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts,” the memo said in response to those claims.
