Vice President Kamala Harris and the White House criticized Donald Trump for his attacks on the federal response to hurricanes Helen and Milton, and for suggesting he was trying to turn the unfairly deadly storm to his political advantage.
Participating in a Univision-sponsored town hall in Las Vegas, Harris was asked about allegations that federal authorities undermined disaster recovery efforts. He responded: “In this crisis – as in so many things that affect the people of our country – I think it is very important that the leadership recognizes the dignity” to which the people are entitled.
“I must emphasize that this is not the time for people to play politics,” Harris added.
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The comments came after the former president spoke at the Detroit Economic Club, offering condolences to those affected by hurricanes Helen and Milton, the latter of which made landfall in Florida on Wednesday night. But Trump also suggested there was a lack of response from the Biden administration, especially in North Carolina after Helen.
“They allowed these people to suffer unjustly,” said Trump, who has been present for several days spreading lies about the federal response.
Harris In fact, Milton participated in a briefing held in the White House Situation Room with President Joe Biden about emergency efforts. In subsequent comments to reporters, Biden slammed Trump and his supporters spreading misinformation about federal aid available to victims.
“They are being so disgustingly un-American in the way they talk about these things,” Biden said, then adding directly to Trump: “Get a life, help these people.”
Despite the storm, both Trump and Harris are strategically visiting the main swing states, trying to reinforce the support of the main electoral blocs that could decide an election that should be very close.
In Michigan, where he aims to attract mainly blue-collar voters, Trump attacked the city where he is campaigning, suggesting that Detroit was “a mess.”
“Our whole country will be like Detroit if he’s your president,” he said of Harris. “You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”
Harris responded that Trump “destroyed yet another great American city while in Detroit, just another piece of evidence in a long list of why he is unfit to be president of the United States.”
Trump's economic speech had several flaws
The former president took advantage of his appearance at the Detroit Economic Club to echo key themes from his 2016 campaign, saying that some other countries, especially China, are stealing from the United States and robbing industrial companies. Trump says powerful companies 'raped' the US.
“They’ve been stealing from us for so many years that we might as well get some of it back,” Trump said of the countries’ tariffs.
Economists have warned Trump's proposed tariffs will increase costs for consumers. Trump also said, without elaborating, that he could use the tariffs to reduce the U.S. budget deficit and expand child care funding, although he offered other ideas without saying how to replace the lost funding.
But the former president doesn't seem to understand the difference between budget deficits and trade imbalances, confusing two different economic measures as essentially the same thing.
He noted that the federal government's total debt is about $36 billion, a byproduct of the annual borrowing needed to cover the gap between tax revenues and government spending. With the exception of Trump, it then appeared that debt was a byproduct of the trade deficit with China – a separate issue that reflects the difference between how much a country exports and how much it imports.
Trump said: 'We have 36 trillion dollars in debt. “For years and years, we have been accumulating. We want to have this monster in this deficit. We had a deficit of 5,6,7 dollars and 800 billion with China.
Related stories: Even as Trump criticized China's trade practices, his Bible was printed there
He also claimed that “we had the most jobs under my administration,” but that is no longer true. The unemployment rate fell slightly under Biden — 3.4% early last year, the lowest in half a century, down from 3.5% before the pandemic under Trump.
Harris aims to increase Hispanic support
Harris held a rally near Phoenix after attending a town hall meeting for the Spanish-language network Univision. He seeks to increase support among Hispanic voters, especially men.
His campaign this week launched a group called “Hombres con Harris” — Spanish for “Men for Harris” — that plans to hold events at Latino-owned small businesses, unions, barbecues and community events leading up to Election Day.
On Univision's “Latinos Ask, Kamala Harris Responds” event, Ivette Castillo, 40 and a Las Vegas resident, told Harris that she is a U.S. citizen born to two Mexican parents and that her mother died six weeks ago. He cried as he asked the vice president “the plan to support this subset of immigrants throughout their lives and those who live and die in the shadows.” When the town hall ended, Harris walked over and shook hands with Castillo, whose face was still streaked with tears.
In response to her question, Harris noted that Biden sent a bill to Congress on his first day in office to create a path to U.S. citizenship for many people in the country illegally that had never been considered.
Unauthorized border crossings reached record levels during the Biden administration before declining this year after the president issued an executive order limiting asylum requests.
Another audience member asked Harris to explain how he replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket, prompting him to respond: “President Biden made a decision that I think history will show was probably the boldest a president could make.”
He said Biden “put country before self-interest” and “encouraged me to run.”
Hispanic voters are divided over whether they believe Harris or Trump will do a better job managing the economy, but they give the former president an edge in managing immigration. Hispanic women are more likely to trust Harris to better manage the economy and immigration, and Hispanic men are more likely to trust Trump on both issues, according to a poll from The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Later in Arizona, Harris praised the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain for defying his party and voting to preserve the Obama administration's health care law. That drew prolonged applause as people in the crowd gave the thumbs-down gesture to signify opposition to McCain's GOP recall.
“It was late, late, late at night and they were trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act again,” Harris recalled of the Senate vote. “And the late, great John McCain, the great American war hero… said, 'No, you don't. No, you don't. No, you don't.'
Harris deviated from her usual campaign rhetoric to urge Arizonans to vote in a statewide referendum to protect abortion rights and spoke about preserving tribal rights and responsible water policy.
“I promise you that as president, I will continue to invest in drought prevention,” Harris said.
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