While millions of Americans come face-to-face with the reality that they no longer have a place to call “home,” Vice President Kamala Harris was campaigning around the country.
Hurricane Helene, a massive Category 4 hurricane, made landfall Thursday in Florida and plowed through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Other states, including Virginia, also have been affected.
Helene claimed the lives of over 175 people and hundreds remained missing after the storm, authorities said.
President Joe Biden and Harris finally headed to the disaster area Wednesday, nearly a week after the storm made landfall. Biden visited North Carolina and South Carolina while Harris surveyed damage in Georgia.
Biden and Harris responded to criticism by saying they didn’t want to visit affected communities until their presence wouldn’t cause risks or delay an emergency response.
Both the president and his vice president were criticized for being away from the White House over the weekend as Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc.
Biden spent the weekend at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, rather than at the White House monitoring the hurricane.
“I was commanding it,” Biden responded Monday when asked why he didn’t command the federal response from the White House. “I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday and the day before as well. I command it. It’s called a telephone.”
Biden did cut short his time in Delaware and returned Sunday to Washington.
Harris was on a West Coast campaign swing in the storm’s aftermath.
On Friday, the vice president visited the southern border in Arizona, posing in front of a section of former President Donald Trump’s border wall, which she once called a “medieval vanity project” and a “stupid use of money.” Harris later held a campaign event in Douglas, Arizona.
Harris then headed to California and spent the weekend speaking at campaign fundraisers.
Her San Francisco fundraiser, at the Palace of the Arts, raised well over $20 million. In Los Angeles, Harris raised $28 million, with some megadonors paying nearly $1 million to be there.
The vice president released a statement Saturday about the hurricane.
“My heart goes out to everyone impacted by the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Helene,” Harris said in the statement, issued while she was raising money in California. “As we continue to respond and as communities recover, our administration will remain in constant contact with state and local officials.”
“I have been briefed by FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and will continue to receive regular updates,” Harris added.
Harris posted on X that she was briefed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Criswell via phone Sunday night on a flight from California to Nevada. Harris continued her campaign tour, speaking at a rally in Las Vegas.
Harris had two campaign events scheduled in Nevada on Monday but decided to cut her trip short and rush back to Washington to be briefed at FEMA headquarters.
In the meantime, Trump created a GoFundMe page to support victims of the hurricane; it soon raised over $3 million.
Trump was briefed by FEMA in Georgia and visited hurricane victims Sunday in their ruined neighborhoods.