Harris Rips Trump on Fed Storm Response10/11 06:22

   Vice President Kamala Harris and the White House criticized Donald Trump for 
his attacks on the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton and 
suggested he was wrongly trying to turn the deadly storms to his political 
advantage.

   LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Vice President Kamala Harris and the White House 
criticized Donald Trump for his attacks on the federal response to Hurricanes 
Helene and Milton and suggested he was wrongly trying to turn the deadly storms 
to his political advantage.

   Attending a town hall sponsored by Univision in Las Vegas, Harris was asked 
about complaints that federal officials have bungled disaster recovery efforts. 
She responded, "In this crisis -- like in so many issues that affect the people 
of our country -- I think it so important that leadership recognizes the 
dignity" to which people are entitled.

   "I have to stress that this is not a time for people to play politics," 
Harris added.

   Those comments came after the former president spoke at the Detroit Economic 
Club, offering sympathy to people affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the 
latter of which came ashore in Florida Wednesday night. But Trump also 
suggested that the Biden administration's response had been lacking, 
particularly in North Carolina after Helene.

   "They've let those people suffer unjustly," said Trump, who has for several 
days promoted falsehoods about the federal response.

   Harris virtually attended a briefing, held in the White House Situation Room 
with President Joe Biden, on emergency efforts in Milton's wake. In subsequent 
comments to reporters, Biden slammed Trump and his supporters for spreading 
misinformation about federal assistance available to victims.

   "They're being so damn un-American with the way they're talking about this 
stuff," Biden said, then adding directly to Trump: "Get a life, man. Help these 
people."

   Despite the storm, Trump and Harris are both visiting key swing states 
strategically, trying to increase support with key voting blocs who could 
decide an election expected to be exceedingly close.

   In Michigan, where he's looking to appeal primarily to blue-collar voters, 
Trump took a swipe at the city he happened to be campaigning in, suggesting 
that Detroit was "a mess."

   "Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she's your president," 
he said of Harris. "You're going to have a mess on your hands."

   Harris responded that Trump "yet again has trashed another great American 
city when he was in Detroit, which is just a further piece of evidence on a 
very long list of why he is unfit to be president of the United States."

   Trump's economic speech featured multiple errors

   The former president used his appearance at the Detroit Economic Club to 
echo core themes from his 2016 campaign, saying some other countries, 
especially China, are ripping the U.S. off and taking manufacturing business 
away. Trump said powerful companies have "raped" the United States.

   "They've been screwing us for so many years that we're allowed to get some 
of that back," Trump said about charging tariffs from countries.

   Economists warn Trump's proposed tariffs would drive up consumer costs. 
Trump has also claimed, without providing specifics, that he can use tariffs to 
reduce the U.S. budget deficit and pay for an expansion of childcare funding, 
even as he proposes other ideas without saying how he would replace the lost 
funding.

   But the former president seemed to not understand the difference between the 
budget deficit and trade imbalances, conflating the two different economic 
measures as essentially being the same thing.

   He noted that the federal government has nearly $36 trillion in total debt, 
a byproduct of the annual borrowing needed to cover the gap between tax 
revenues and government spending. Except Trump then seemed to indicate that the 
debt was a byproduct of the trade deficit with China -- which is a separate 
issue that reflects the difference between how much a country exports and how 
much it imports.

   "We have $36 trillion in debt," Trump said. "For years and years and years, 
we've been accumulating. We'd have these deficits that are monstrous. We had 
5,6,7 $800 billion deficit with China."

   He also claimed that "we had the highest job numbers in my administration," 
but that isn't true any longer. The unemployment rate fell slightly lower under 
Biden -- to 3.4% early last year, the lowest in a half-century, below 3.5% 
before the pandemic under Trump.

   Harris looks to boost Hispanic support

   Harris held a rally near Phoenix after participating in the town hall for 
the Spanish-language network Univision. She's looking to increase support among 
Hispanic voters, especially men.

   Her campaign began a group this week known as "Hombres con Harris" -- 
Spanish for "Men for Harris" -- that is planning to hold events at Latino-owned 
small businesses, union halls, barbecues and community events until Election 
Day.

   At Univision's "Latinos Ask, Kamala Harris Responds" event, Ivett Castillo, 
40 and a Las Vegas resident, told Harris that she's an American citizen born to 
two Mexican parents and that her mother died six weeks ago. She cried as she 
asked the vice president about "plans to support that subgroup of immigrants 
here their whole lives and who live and die in the shadows." When the town hall 
ended, Harris went over and clasped hands with Castillo, whose face was still 
streaked with tears.

   In response to her question, Harris noted that Biden sent a bill to Congress 
on his first day in office seeking to create pathways to U.S. citizenship for 
many people in the country illegally that was never considered.

   Unauthorized border crossings hit record highs during the Biden 
administration before declining this year after the president issued an 
executive order restricting asylum claims.

   Another audience member asked Harris to explain how she replaced Biden on 
the Democratic ticket, prompting her to respond, "President Biden made a 
decision that I think history will show was probably one of the most courageous 
a president could make."

   She said Biden "put country before personal interest" and "urged me to run."

   Hispanic voters are about evenly split on whether to trust Harris or Trump 
to do a better job handling the economy, but they give the former president an 
edge on handling immigration. Hispanic women are more likely to trust Harris to 
better handle the economy and immigration, and Hispanic men are more likely to 
trust Trump on both issues, according to polling from The Associated Press and 
the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

   Later, in Arizona, Harris praised the late Republican Arizona Sen. John 
McCain for defying his party and voting to preserve the Obama administration's 
signature health care law. That drew extended cheers while people in the crowd 
made thumbs-down gestures to signify McCain's opposition to the GOP effort to 
repeal it.

   "It was late, late, late in the night and they were trying to get rid of the 
Affordable Care Act again," Harris recalled of the Senate vote. "And the late, 
great John McCain, the great American war hero ... said: 'No you don't. No you 
don't. No you don't.'"

   Harris also deviated from her usual campaign speech to urge Arizonans to 
vote in a state referendum to safeguard abortion rights and talked about 
preserving tribal rights and responsible water policy.

   "I promise you as president I will continue to invest in drought 
resilience," Harris said.