Two superstorms, Helene and Milton, which caused major damage to the United States just weeks apart, have "landed" during this year's presidential election.
US Vice President Kamala Harris (right) and former President Donald Trump during the first live debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10. Photo: THX/TTXVN
Two back-to-back hurricanes have thrown Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump into disarray. Both Harris and Trump have spent time recently fielding questions about recovery efforts. The two storms have helped voters assess which candidate will better handle dangerous natural disasters, an issue that once went unnoticed but has become an increasingly routine part of the job of governing. And just weeks before the Nov. 5 election, the storms have disrupted election preparations in several states. Vice President Harris is trying to use the development to showcase her leadership skills, appearing at press conferences with President Joe Biden and calling for bipartisan cooperation. The need to provide more money to the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has prompted House Republicans to coordinate with the Democratic administration. Former President Trump, meanwhile, used the moment to attack the Biden administration's capabilities. Trump also wondered if the administration was withholding aid to Republican areas, although there was no evidence of this accusation. For his part, President Biden said on October 11 that Hurricane Milton alone caused an estimated $50 billion in damage. Professor Timothy Kneeland at Nazareth College (USA) assessed: "Dealing with successive crises will bring more scrutiny to FEMA and therefore the Biden administration in the days before the election." Candidates Trump and Harris traveled to Georgia and North Carolina to assess the damage caused by the storms and pledged support. This led both candidates to cancel campaign events elsewhere. Both Georgia and North Carolina are battleground states, which increases the risk. Hurricanes were also mentioned during the candidates’ campaign events. On October 10, Vice President Harris’ first question in Las Vegas was from a construction worker who is also a voter in Tampa, Florida. The worker asked about rumors that the government was not doing enough to help people after Hurricane Helene and wondered if people affected by Hurricane Milton had access to aid. Harris responded: “I can’t emphasize enough the work we’ve done around the clock to make sure federal resources are distributed, working with state and local leaders to get people the relief they need right away, and our commitment to helping people over the long term.” On the same day, candidate Trump opened his speech by praising Republican governors in states affected by the two storms while criticizing the Biden administration and his "deputy" Harris. Former President Trump assessed the cases affected by Hurricane Helene: "They let the people there suffer unjustly." The two storms also disrupted voting in some places. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper signed a bill into law this week that gives residents in 25 affected counties more options for voting, while Florida will give some counties more flexibility in distributing mail-in ballots and changing in-person voting locations.
East Tennessee State University professor Candace Bright Hall-Wurst said natural disasters are becoming increasingly politicized, often focusing more on politicians than on people in need. "Disasters become politicized when they have value to candidates," Hall-Wurst said. As the Democratic nominee, Harris has become a key part of the hurricane response, a role that has not traditionally been associated with the vice president in previous administrations, according to the AP. Harris joined a White House Situation Room meeting on Hurricane Milton virtually on Oct. 10 while she was in Nevada for campaign events. She had previously called in to CNN on Oct. 9 to discuss the administration's efforts. At an Oct. 11 meeting with President Biden to discuss the storms, Harris repeated a message that ties into her campaign policies aimed at preventing price gouging. “Any company or individual that exploits this crisis to increase prices fraudulently or dramatically, whether at the gas station, the airport, or the hotel counter, we will be looking at it and there will be consequences,” Harris warned. Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida on the night of Oct. 9 (local time) and left more than 3 million people without power. But Milton did not reach the level of Helene, which killed about 230 people. “These disasters will essentially be a good test of the leadership of local, state and federal officials in terms of how they respond,” said Carnegie Mellon University professor John Gasper. But Gasper noted that American politics has become so polarized and other issues like the economy are shaping the election, so the debate now generating so much pressure between candidate Trump and the Biden-Harris administration may not matter much on Election Day. “Will it shape the election? Probably not. There are a lot of other things out there,” he said. Here’s a video of the damage in Florida after Hurricane Milton moved through (source: Reuters):
Source: https://baotintuc.vn/the-gioi/bao-milton-va-helene-do-bo-vao-bau-cu-my-20241012090616826.htm
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