October 8, 2024
“We’ve got a low pressure system and a northeastern breeze
We’ve got a falling barometer and rising seas
We’ve got the cumulonimbus and possible gale
We’ve got a force nine blowing on the Beaufort scale”“Storm Front” by Billy Joel
Today’s stories focus on tackling some storms on quite a few levels.
Weathering the Media
Vice President Kamala Harris has been working overtime the past couple of days to combat her opponent’s claims that her campaign has been avoiding being interviewed by the media. After an appearance on the super-popular Call Her Daddy podcast over the weekend, Harris was grilled last night on CBS’ 60 Minutes, and is showing up on several shows in New York today, including The View, The Howard Stern Show, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. And later in the week, she’s due to have a town hall with Univision. Her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, made a late-night appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! before heading out to campaign events today in Sacramento, Seattle, and Reno.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump canceled his scheduled appearance on 60 Minutes. According to CBS themselves, Trump had demanded that CBS agree not to fact-check him during the interview, and later, further demanded that they apologize for how tough Lesley Stahl was in her 2020 interview with him (that he walked out on). Naturally, CBS refused both of these, which led to Trump pulling out. Despite claims, it’s been Trump who’s been avoiding unscripted conversations with unfriendly media, and instead sticking with Fox News appearances, with a virtual town hall scheduled today with campaign surrogates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Representative Tulsi Gabbard.
FEMA Battens the Hatches
With Hurricane Milton barreling its way across the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida, and less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been both preparing to respond to potential damage — and actively responding to damaging misinformation thrown at them from various sources. In fact, FEMA has created a webpage to debunk many of the falsehoods about how disaster funding works.
Governors and state legislators from Helene-hit areas have been praising the federal government’s response, in contrast to inaccuracy-filled attacks from Trump and others. For instance, Trump has repeatedly claimed that people hit by Helene are getting just $750 to try to recover from the disaster. FEMA does offer $750 as what’s known as “Serious Needs Assistance”, which is designed to give people an initial and rapid direct relief payment to cover emergency supplies like food, water, baby formula, and other basics, but doesn’t prevent them from applying for further assistance to recover once the immediate needs are addressed.
Trump and friends have also been claiming that FEMA funds have been diverted to take care of migrants. While there are some concerns about funding for what’s known as the Disaster Relief Fund, this has nothing to do with immigrants. The DRF is appropriated by Congress, and with Congress having left town just before Helene hit — and House Speaker Mike Johnson refusing calls for them to reconvene before the election — the fund could be hit hard from the one-two punch of Helene and Milton.
Bob Woodward Goes To War
Famed journalist and author Bob Woodward’s latest book, War, which focuses on the years-long political contest between Trump and President Joe Biden, is to be released next week, but is already getting some pushback from the Trump team. By the end of the book, Woodward states emphatically that, despite some missteps along the way, Biden shows “steady and purposeful leadership”, while Trump is “unfit to lead the country”. The Trump campaign issued a statement attacking Woodward’s reporting, saying that “none of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true.”
Among other revelations in the book, Woodward chronicles:
- Trump sent American-made coronavirus tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
- Biden, well-known for occasional expletive outbursts on other occasions, used quite a few in private to refer to Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
- Harris was noted as using a friendly, amicable approach to Netanyahu in private, but broke with Biden in taking a harsher, more forceful tone in public, which infuriated the Israeli PM.
- Biden criticized his former boss’s reaction to Putin invading the Crimea region of Ukraine, stating that, “Barack [Obama] never took Putin seriously.”
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