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.
Post a Comment