President Biden and Vice President Harris each travel to the storm-ravaged Southeast on Wednesday, two days after Donald Trump visited – as the death toll and devastation from Hurricane Helene soars.
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris each travel to the storm-ravaged Southeast on Wednesday, as the death toll and devastation from Hurricane Helene soars and a couple of million people remain without power and running water.
Over 160 people have been killed by Helene since the hurricane made landfall in Florida late Thursday before tearing a path of destruction through the interior Southeast. The storm sparked millions of power outages and billions of dollars in property damage as it smashed through the southern Appalachian Mountains and into the Tennessee Valley.
As the floodwaters from the storm receded, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper lamented that in the western part of his state « communities were wiped off the map. »
North Carolina and Georgia, which was also hard hit by the storm, are two of the seven key battlegrounds whose razor-thin margins decided Biden’s 2020 election victory over former President Trump and are expected to determine the outcome of the 2024 showdown between Harris and Trump.
And with a margin-of-error race between the vice president and Trump with less than five weeks to go until Election Day on Nov. 5, and with the former president during a trip to the storm-damaged region earlier this week blasting both Biden and Harris over the federal response, the hurricane has become front-and-center in the White House race.
The president on Wednesday heads to North Carolina, where he’ll survey damage from a helicopter flight over the city of Ashville, one of the hardest hit areas. Biden will also visit a rescue command center in the state before also stopping in neighboring South Carolina.
« My top priority is to ensure the communities devastated by this hurricane get the help and support they need as quickly as possible », Biden told reporters Tuesday as he spoke during a Cabinet meeting focusing on the federal response.
Trump this past weekend accused the president of « sleeping » at his beach house in Delaware as the storm blasted the Southeast.
And speaking with reporters as he arrived in Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, the former president charged that « the federal government is not being responsive.
