Showdown between Harris and Trump: Hurricane Helene in the sights of the election storm

As the death toll and devastation from Hurricane Helene mounts across the Southeast, both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will be briefed by officials on Monday as the destructive storm hits just over five in the middle of the race for the White House is weeks until election day.

Trump will stop in Valdosta, Georgia, to survey the devastation, help distribute aid and “provide remarks to the press,” according to his campaign.

Harris returned to Washington, D.C., on Monday morning, ending a campaign shakeup in the West. The White House said the vice president will travel to the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters upon her arrival in the nation's capital, where she will be briefed on the hurricane's impact and the federal response to support rescue and recovery efforts.

HERE YOU CAN FIND THE CURRENT FOX NEWS REPORTS ABOUT HELENE'S HAVOC

A van floats in floodwaters near the village of Biltmore following Hurricane Helene on September 28, 2024 in Asheville, North Carolina. Hurricane Helene made landfall in Big Bend, Florida, on Thursday evening with winds of up to 140 miles per hour. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

More than 120 people have been killed by Helene since the hurricane hit Florida late Thursday and then cut a path of destruction through the interior southeast. The storm caused millions of power outages and billions of dollars in property damage as it swept through the southern Appalachians and into the Tennessee Valley.

SCENES FROM THE PATH OF THE STORM'S DESTRUCTION

The hardest-hit states included North Carolina and Georgia, two of the seven key battlegrounds whose razor-thin margins decided President Biden's victory over Trump in 2020 and are expected to decide the outcome of the Harris-Trump showdown in 2024 .

Trump took aim at the administration and Harris over the storm at a rally Sunday in battleground Pennsylvania, accusing the president of “sleeping” at his beach house in Delaware as the storm swept across the Southeast.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at a campaign event at the Bayfront Convention Center in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, September 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Droke)

Biden returned to the nation's capital on Sunday afternoon to oversee the federal relief effort.

The White House noted that over 3,300 federal personnel have been deployed to support storm response efforts in affected states and that at least 50,000 personnel from across the country and Canada are responding to the massive power outages in affected areas.

Biden told reporters that the federal government is giving states “everything we have” to help them respond to the storm and that “we're not leaving until the job is done.”

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Biden said he would tour areas damaged by the storm later this week as long as his presence on the ground did not hinder rescue and recovery efforts.

“I am determined to travel to the affected areas as quickly as possible, but I have been told it would be disruptive if I did so now. We will not do this at the risk of distracting or delaying the response.” “We have the resources necessary to deal with this crisis,” he told reporters on Monday.

Trump attacked Harris at his rally on Sunday for attending “fundraisers with her radical left-wing crazy donors” in California this weekend. He argued that Harris “should be in the area” where the storm caused destruction.

Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a rally Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The White House said Harris spoke with the governors of Florida, Georgia and North Carolina on Sunday and that “the Vice President intends to visit affected communities as quickly as possible without disrupting the emergency response.”

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In a statement Saturday, Harris said she and the president “remain committed to ensuring that no community or state must respond to this disaster alone.”

How elected officials respond to natural disasters can significantly influence their political fortunes during election campaigns.

Trump faced criticism early in his White House term as Puerto Rico struggled to recover from a powerful storm. The then-president was criticized for throwing paper towels into the crowd as he stopped by a relief center during a storm-related visit to the island.

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