Tuesday, October 08, 2024 - U.S. Vice President, Kamala Harris on Tuesday, October 8 said she thinks former US President Donald Trump has no empathy for others after he criticized the federal response to Hurricane Helene.
Following Hurricane Helene, and with Hurricane Milton
barreling toward Florida, Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that
the White House is diverting disaster relief aid to unrelated migrant programs.
While FEMA does manage grants for housing and helping migrants, that is a
separate account and unrelated to the disaster relief funds.
Trump has also repeatedly criticized the Biden
administration’s response to Helene, stating that there is an anti-Republican
bias in how President Joe Biden and Harris are responding to the crisis.
Harris described travelling to both Georgia and North
Carolina to survey the impact of the hurricane, emphasizing the “pain” and
“shock” people are still in. At least 235 people have died due to Helene, and
Milton is expected to pound Florida in the coming days after quickly
intensifying into a major hurricane, at one point reaching Category 5. It’s
expected to remain a powerful Category 4 storm before it hits landfall on
Wednesday night.
“It’s profound, and it is the height of irresponsibility and
frankly callousness. … Lives are literally at stake right now,” Harris said
during an interview on ABC’s “The View.” “I mean we’re talking about real human
beings and their lives and they’re losing everything, everything.”
She added, “The idea that somebody would be playing political
games for the sake of himself – but this is so consistent about Donald Trump.”
“He puts himself before the needs of others. I fear that he
really lacks empathy on a very basic level to care about the suffering of other
people and then understand the role of a leader is not to beat people down,
it’s to lift people up, especially in a time of crisis,” she added.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has also
lamented the state of disinformation around relief efforts to date.
“I’m going to divorce the disinformation that is being spread
from any one individual and just say this: Disinformation harms survivors of a
disaster because they lose trust in their government and they don’t seek the
assistance that they need and to which they are entitled and that we can
deliver,” Mayorkas said on CNN on Tuesday.
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