With Hurricane Helene in the southeast region causing pervasive damage across states, along with Hurricane Milton devastatingly entering Florida, Donald Trump grasped the opportunity to gain an upper hand in the presidential campaigning by using misinformation as a political strategy.
Trump falsely claimed that FEMA misemployed the disaster funds on migrants under Biden administration, exacerbating his controversial stance on migration.
The narrative not only makes the migrants more vulnerable but also creates a sense of scepticism in the storm-stricken communities regarding the abuse of allocated funds. Trump accused the Democrat government of being “incompetent and inefficient”.
Similarly, the current vice president and her party has also time and again counter-fired the attacks on Trump including the social media response to Trump mocking the Democrat’s take on climate change.
While both the contenders have politicised the hurricane suffering of Americans at crucial times with less than a month before elections, Harris seems to be in a more fragile position considering her stake in current government as the VP and her ongoing presidential campaign.
Doug Heye, a Republican representative having strong ties with North Carolina, said “We’re a month out from an election, politics are always going to be a part of it, but people who are pushing a political agenda in these instances are not helping their own voters”, amid disastrous impacts of hurricane in the state.
With death toll reaching around 232 and thousands facing outages in critical swing states like North Carolina and Georgia, both the candidates have been throwing a monkey wrench at each other to win the race for the White House in the wake of disaster.
