CNN
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Long before Hurricane Milton’s outer bands hit Florida’s coast, a political battle over the massive storm was already raging.

A potential natural disaster of this magnitude – this could be the gigantic climate change-induced monster that scientists have long feared – should be immune to political opportunism.

But in the final weeks of a presidential election with a candidate as relentless as Donald Trump, nothing escapes partisanship, and Milton’s aftermath could prove to be the next impetus for the ex-president’s maelstrom of misinformation.

Typically, political shocks caused by hurricanes occur only after the stormy winds have passed. This time the dispute started early, in part because Trump was so eager to exploit Hurricane Helene last week for his political advantage.

For Vice President Kamala Harris, the storm offers a dangerous spotlight that could allow her to show she can handle the media moment in a presidential context. It could demonstrate their ability to express compassion for victims and their mastery of the government machinery. But any failures in federal rescue and relief efforts after the storm is expected to hit land late Wednesday or early Thursday could weigh on them ahead of next month’s election. Complicating Harris’s test is the likelihood that even if the federal effort goes well, Trump will surely fabricate a story implicating them in failure.

That explains why the Democratic nominee tried to get ahead of Trump and the storm by telling reporters Monday night that the former president was spreading misinformation about federal aid. “It’s about him, not about you.” The vice president doubled down on his statement Tuesday, telling ABC’s “The View” that “for certain leaders this isn’t an issue that’s about partisanship or politics, but for others it might be.” .”

Administration officials reiterated the vice president’s message on Tuesday. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell warned on CNN News Central that Trump’s rhetoric was making people fearful that the government wouldn’t help them. And the White House has opened an account on Reddit, a social media platform, to identify and combat misinformation.

President Joe Biden may be dealing with the last major national emergency of his term. The sense of urgency intensified Tuesday morning when he postponed a trip abroad to Germany and Angola. No president can afford to be abroad while a national emergency is looming. Biden’s first task is to fulfill his core mission as president – keeping Americans safe. But with his foreign policy legacy likely to be tarnished by unresolved wars in the Middle East, he will surely want to avoid domestic chaos that would overshadow his final days in office – and could harm his chosen successor, Harris.

Trump has repeatedly shown that there is no situation that he would not exploit for political gain. He used Hurricane Helene to bolster his portrayal of the Biden-Harris administration as an incompetent rabble unable to meet the basic needs of the American people. In the same way, he has accused Harris of complicity in a national crisis that he says is rife with crime and rampant immigration and is headed toward World War III. Trump’s criticism is a caricature. While the country struggles – food prices remain stubbornly high and the asylum system is overwhelmed – he creates a classic alternative reality for his fans and the echoes of the conservative media.

Biden responds to Trump’s false claim about Hurricane Helene relief

Trump used the same tactic during the Hurricane Helene drama, falsely accusing Democrats of ignoring Republican areas. The ex-president falsely said Biden was ignoring calls from Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp. He also falsely claimed that Harris had blown up the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s budget for housing undocumented immigrants and therefore could not help the storm’s victims. And Trump and his vice presidential running mate, Senator JD Vance, misled the country by claiming that the federal government was offering only $750 in aid to citizens who had lost their homes. Some of Trump’s claims have been refuted by Republican leaders in Georgia and Tennessee. But from Trump’s perspective, it doesn’t matter whether his claims are nonsense. It’s about gaining traction with voters who may not know the nuances of federal relief efforts but may take away an unflattering image of Harris.

Trump argues that both Harris and Biden lack mentality and are not up to the job of president. He has dismissed Democrats’ claims that he is politicizing the hurricane season after rushing to battleground North Carolina to make false claims about government incompetence. “Everything I do, they’re going to say, ‘Oh, it’s political,'” the former president told Laura Ingraham on Fox on Monday. “If I do something good, no matter what I do, they’re going to say, ‘Oh, he did it for politics.’ I mean, they could have been there way before me.” Trump’s own haphazard post-hurricane leadership could also come back to haunt him .

The Harris campaign tried Monday to revive memories of his checkered record on disaster management by debuting an ad featuring two former Trump administration officials, Olivia Troye and Kevin Carroll, that claimed the former president once tried to withhold disaster relief funds from democratic states.

And Harris used the approaching storm as a prism to criticize Trump’s character and advance her argument that he is an “unrespectable man” who poses a major threat if re-elected. On ABC’s “The View” on Tuesday, she accused him of “putting himself above the needs of others.” Harris added: “I fear that at a very basic level he really lacks the empathy to care about other people’s suffering and then understand that the role of a leader is not to put people down, but to to lift them up, especially in times of crisis.”

Still, Trump’s maneuver is the latest sign of an advantage he has over Harris, even though he has his own presidential record to defend – as a non-incumbent, he has the luxury of criticizing the administration’s performance without bearing personal responsibility.

The storm policy is shaped by the memory of two catastrophes. The botched handling of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, helped destroy President George W. Bush’s second term. And President Barack Obama’s safer handling of Superstorm Sandy, a hurricane that devastated the East Coast in 2012, helped him defeat Republican Mitt Romney in this year’s election. Sandy is best remembered for then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s support of Obama as he sought maximum federal aid for his state. That angered many Republicans. And Christie followed suit during his subsequent Republican presidential campaigns with the decision to put duty above politics.

One major political player unlikely to make the same decision is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who may harbor future national political ambitions after his failed bid for the Republican nomination in 2024. DeSantis faces a similar dilemma to Christie — despite his disdain for the president and vice president, he must work seamlessly with a Democratic administration for the good of his state. And his future political considerations would probably be no more likely to tolerate a failed relief effort than Harris’s. Like Harris, DeSantis began playing hurricane politics long before Milton’s arrival. A White House official told CNN that he declined their calls about the hurricane – a claim he denied but which did not spare him rebuke from the vice president.

DeSantis has chosen a political path that requires dealing with lame-duck Biden but does nothing to boost Harris in a way that could draw the ire of Trump. “She’s selfish for trying to stumble into this even though we’re doing well,” DeSantis said Monday night. “I have had storms under both President Trump and President Biden and I have worked well with both of them. She’s the first to try to politicize the storm, and she’s only doing it because of her campaign. “She’s trying to gain an advantage,” complained the Florida Republican.

Unlike Harris, Biden had kinder words for DeSantis, saying Tuesday that the governor had been “cooperative.”

“I said no, ‘You’re doing a great job, everything’s being done well, we thank you for it,'” Biden said.

But the president also offered political insurance against future complaints that the Florida Republican didn’t get what he wanted from the White House. “I literally gave him my personal phone number to call,” Biden said.