New Harris digital ad attacks Trump’s handling of natural disaster relief

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is launching a new digital ad campaign featuring two former Donald Trump administration officials criticizing the former president’s handling of natural disasters while in office.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is launching a new digital ad campaign featuring two former Donald Trump administration officials criticizing the former president’s handling of natural disasters while in office. The ad, titled “Withhold” and obtained first by CNN, is a response to Trump’s recent attacks on the federal response to Hurricane Helene, including his false claims that Harris spent “all her FEMA money” on housing “illegal migrants” and unsubstantiated claims that the Biden administration and Democratic leaders abandoned certain Republican communities in North Carolina out of partisan bias. The new ad comes as Hurricane Milton, a Category 5, is set to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday. Olivia Troye, who served as an aide to former Vice President Mike Pence, and Kevin Carroll, a former Trump Homeland Security official, claim in the ad that Trump, while president, suggested wanting to withhold disaster relief funds from Democratic states. “He would suggest not giving disaster relief to states that hadn’t voted for him,” Carroll says in the ad. Troye says: “I remember one time after a wildfire in California, he wouldn’t send relief because it was a Democratic state. So we went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas to show him, ‘These are people who voted for you.’ This isn’t normal.” Both Carroll and Troye say in the ad that they plan to vote for Harris. Troye previously endorsed Harris and delivered a speech during the Democratic National Convention in which she sharply criticized Trump.