When two major hurricanes — Helene and Milton — pummeled the southeastern United States just weeks before the 2024 presidential election, there was little chance that the response to those back-to-back disasters would not become political.
Both President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris attempted to spin the situation to their party’s advantage in the days that followed. Harris claimed that, if Trump were to be elected again, he would deny aid to states that did not vote for him in the fast-approaching election.
Trump suggested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was slow-rolling relief efforts because some of the hardest-hit areas in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee were deep red areas where he was very popular. The delayed relief, some feared, could even make it difficult for polling places in those areas to open — or for people…
