Donald Trump flies into hurricane country on Monday as his opponent Kamala Harris returns home to Washington for briefings, as both adjust their campaigns to the devastation wrought by Helene at the weekend.
Trump will be in Valdosta, Georgia, where he will get an update on storm damage and will ‘facilitate the distribution of relief supplies,’ as his campaign put it.
Helene ripped into Florida’s Gulf Coast on Thursday night, triggering days of torrential rain and flooding.
It destroyed homes across the South-east and left at least 100 people dead in its wake.
Almost three million people were without power on Sunday night.
President Joe Biden said it was a disaster of ‘tragic’ proportions. And the turmoil throws a wrench into campaigning at a critical stage of the election race.
Harris is cutting short a campaign trip to Nevada Monday so that she can attend briefings in Washington on the hurricane response.
On Sunday evening she spoke with the governor of North Carolina, and was in touch with the governors of Florida and Georgia.
‘She made clear that the administration will stand with the impacted communities throughout their recovery,’ said a White House official.
‘The vice president intends to visit impacted communities as soon as it is possible without disrupting emergency response operations.’
She is expected to be at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Biden also said he planned to visit this week so long as it did not impact recovery work.
That approach stands in contrast to Trump, who is making a beeline for the devastated region.
On Sunday, he attacked Harris for attending weekend ‘fundraising events with her radical left lunatic donors’ in California when the storm was rampaging through the South-east.
‘She ought to be down in the area where she should be,’ Trump said.
The storm worked its way through some of the most hotly contested election states, including Georgia.
His advisers believe he is at his best when visiting communities that believe they have been left behind by Washington.
They point to his trip last year to East Palestine, Ohio—devastated when a train derailed carrying toxic chemicals—before members of the Biden administration, when he spoke up for a town still waiting for help.
But he attracted ridicule in 2017 when he arrived on the storm-wrecked island of Puerto Rico, and threw paper towels into a crowd.
Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz said the sight was ‘abominable.’
Forecasts suggest Helene could have caused as much as $26 billion of property damage.