As Florida recovers from Hurricane Milton, Trump keeps his focus elsewhere

Max Greenwood, Miami Herald on Oct 11, 2024

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MIAMI — As Floridians braced for Hurricane Milton this week, Donald Trump was focused on other things.

At a rally in Pennsylvania, he railed against Vice President Kamala Harris and Sunny Hostin, the co-host of ABC’s “The View.” In a string of posts on his social media site Truth Social, he claimed that Harris’ interview on “60 Minutes” had been spliced and edited to his opponent’s advantage. He has repeatedly blasted the federal response to Hurricane Helene, which dealt a particularly hard blow to western North Carolina late last month.

It wasn’t until Thursday, more than 12 hours after the storm made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane, that Trump cut a video expressing support for his adopted home state in Milton’s aftermath.

“To those who have lost so much, know that you are not alone. We have seen you stand tall against storms before and you will stand tall now, and hopefully on January 20, you will have somebody who’s really going to help you and help you like never before,” Trump said, noting he had spoken to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis about Hurricane Milton.

Trump, a real estate mogul who owns several properties in Florida and claims residency in the Sunshine State, has only sparsely mentioned Hurricane Milton in recent days.

Instead, his response to recent storms – including Hurricane Helene, which tore through Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, and took a particularly high toll on western North Carolina – has focused mainly on hammering the federal disaster relief efforts and falsely claiming that FEMA had run out of money for hurricane recovery because it had spent the funds on migrants living in the U.S. illegally.

Trump’s campaign noted that the former president had opened up his Doral golf resort to 275 FPL linemen ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall this week, and pointed to the video message Trump shared on Thursday expressing support for those affected by the storm.

Karoline Leavitt, the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign, insisted in a statement that the Biden administration’s hurricane response had “been a disaster,” and would have been far more efficient with Trump were in the White House.

Alex Conant, a Republican strategist, said there’s a political element to Trump’s response to Milton: unlike Hurricane Helene, which ravaged North Carolina – a crucial battleground state in the presidential race – Florida doesn’t carry the same kind of political weight this year.

Trump has spent the past few days on the campaign trail in battleground states like Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Michigan. He’s scheduled back in Florida next week where he will attend a Hispanic voter town hall in Miami on Wednesday.

“You have the fact that Florida’s not a true swing state in the presidential race, and so it’s just politically less important right now,” Conant said.

Conant said there’s still time for Trump to turn his attention to the damage in his hurricane-battered home state, especially if he senses that the federal government is botching its response to the storm.

“Trump is not OK just ceding the spotlight to his opposition,” Conant said. “He’ll do what he can to insert himself into the hurricane if he senses an opportunity to go after Kamala Harris.”

Harris, according to the White House, has received regular briefings on Hurricane Milton, as well as the federal government’s rescue and response efforts. In a memo shared with the Herald, Harris’ campaign said that it would put its organizing apparatus in Florida to work to “assist Floridians in need, ensuring they have the resources they deserve while combating misinformation about FEMA and guiding them on how to vote in this year’s election.”

Harris has fielded numerous other engagements during the hurricane. She went on a media blitz this week, sitting for interviews with “60 Minutes,” “The View” and radio host Howard Stern. She shot a guest spot on late night television in which she cracked open a beer with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday and participated in a Hispanic voter town hall in Las Vegas on Thursday.

Harris reportedly tried to reach out to DeSantis about the storm response earlier this week, but the Florida governor said he was unaware that she had tried to reach him and dismissed the vice president’s outreach efforts as “political.”

Florida state Rep. Michele Rayner, who represents a stretch of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties that was hard hit by Hurricane Milton, said that the vice president’s office reached out to her on Thursday to offer support in the wake of the storm. President Joe Biden is expected to visit the state on Sunday to survey the damage from the hurricane, though no plans have been announced for Harris to visit Florida.

Rayner, who said on Friday that she was packing up grocery bags to hand out to those affected by the hurricane, said she has no expectation that Trump or his team will get involved in the recovery efforts.

“I don’t expect anything from him,” Rayner said. “Whether he has made a statement, whether he does a tour, whether he puts out a video, I don’t have any expectation for him to do anything that’s not in his self interest.”

“If he wants to be helpful, he can be helpful,” she added. “But he hasn’t been.”