VALDOSTA, Ga. — The two candidates for president ventured carefully into the politics of Hurricane Helene on Monday, with Vice President Kamala Harris canceling West Coast campaign stops to attend a storm briefing in Washington and former president Donald Trump delivering remarks from a Georgia city battered by the storm.

Trump blasted the administration’s response as inadequate during a trip to severely damaged Valdosta, Ga., while Harris gave remarks at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington, aiming to reassure the public that the administration was acting decisively, but sensibly, in the storm’s wake.

“I plan to be on the ground as soon as possible — as soon as possible without disrupting any emergency response operations, because that must be the highest priority and the first order of business,” Harris said.

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Echoing remarks by President Joe Biden earlier in the day, she said the administration had marshaled more than 3,300 federal employees, who would stay in the worst affected areas in the weeks to come. “Our nation is with you,” she said, backdropped by FEMA employees. “And President Joe Biden and I and all of the folks behind us are with you.”

As people in the affected areas were still reeling from the onslaught of a hurricane that killed more than 100 people, with more than 600 still unaccounted for and communities devastated in six states, the politics of a bitter campaign seeped into the conversation. North Carolina and Georgia are battleground states coveted by both parties in the presidential election.

And as waterlogged communities took their first steps to recovery, the competing campaigns made dueling decisions about where to position their candidates. Trump, in the middle of the desolation, faulted Harris for fundraising during the storm and for being absent in the areas hardest hit by Helene. Harris and other Democrats took subtle digs at Trump, saying politicians should keep themselves — and their large security footprints — away from the most severely damaged places, freeing up first responders to restore services and save lives.

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Biden also announced that on Wednesday he would visit North Carolina, home to some of the hardest-hit communities. He added that he would travel to Georgia and Florida “as soon as possible” to survey the damage there.

Natural disasters, and hurricanes in particular, have a history of playing into national elections, and the response to them is often seen as a measure of the competence of the administration in power. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 contributed to broad dissatisfaction with the administration of President George W. Bush, and Republicans lost control of the House and the Senate the following year.

Trump quickly sought to make an issue out of the hurricane over the weekend, saying Harris “ought to be down in the area” affected by Helene. He reiterated that message Monday after appearing in Valdosta with the Christian humanitarian relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, suggesting he was filling a hole in the federal government’s response.

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“The federal government is not being responsive. [Elected officials are] having a very hard time getting the president on the phone,” Trump said. “He won’t get on, and of course the vice president, she’s out some place campaigning, looking for money.”

Trump also suggested, without evidence, that North Carolina’s Democratic governor was not helping the Republican areas of that hard-hit state.

At Monday’s White House press briefing, Karine Jean-Pierre pushed back against Trump’s assertion that the Biden-Harris administration was being unresponsive to state leaders, recounting statements Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, made at a news conference in Georgia.

“[The President] just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’ And I told him, you know, we got what we need,” Kemp said. “We’ll work through the federal process. He offered and if there’s other things you need just to call him back directly, which, I appreciate that.”

Jean-Pierre also argued that the decision by Biden and Harris to wait before going to storm-damaged areas was the most prudent choice.

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The vice president spent the weekend on a West Coast campaign swing, raising $55 million at a pair of California fundraisers. Later, she announced she would cancel other campaign events to return to Washington and attend the FEMA briefing. She stepped off the plane just after 4:30 p.m. Monday and was speaking at FEMA a half-hour later, saying she had spent the past two days talking with governors and local officials from states that took the most damage.

Harris’s campaign said she was not immediately going to areas hit hardest by the storm. Harris said she was evaluating a trip to the area at a later time, when the significant security footprint customary for a vice president would not detract from recovery efforts.

Meanwhile, her campaign criticized Trump’s remarks at a rally in Walker, Mich., where he said of those affected by the storm: “If we were there, we’d be helping you. You’ll be okay.”

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KamalaHQ, the Harris campaign’s X account, shared video of that comment with its roughly 1.3 million followers, suggesting that the former president was downplaying a deadly disaster.

“You’ll be okay,” the tweet read, along with a parenthetical note: “(Dozens of deaths have already been reported).”

In addition, Harris allies highlighted that Project 2025 — the road map for a second Trump administration drafted by conservative think tanks in Washington — would privatize weather forecasting now conducted by federal agencies.

Disaster experts say it can be complicated to time a visit by someone with the security footprint of a president or vice president, because the extensive logistics involved could disrupt response efforts.

“When a president comes into a disaster area, all aircraft are grounded for security reasons,” said Eric Holdeman, the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management. “You don’t want to ground helicopters or drones that are trying to figure out how bad things are and what resources are needed. And you don’t need the political distraction.”

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W. Craig Fugate, who led FEMA under President Barack Obama, said that when the president or vice president visits a disaster zone, local law enforcement officers are often asked to help provide security instead of assisting with the disaster response.

“Politicians showing up in a disaster zone are a pain in the ass,” Fugate said.

The question of when to visit a disaster zone has plagued politicians for the past several election cycles. When Superstorm Sandy struck before the 2012 election, Obama visited affected areas within 48 hours of the hurricane’s landfall.

In 2005, Bush faced criticism after he was photographed peering out the window of Air Force One at the damage in New Orleans from Katrina. Bush said the photo, which became a symbol of his administration’s response to Katrina, was a “huge mistake” that made him look “detached and uncaring” in the face of tragedy.

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During his first term, Trump also faced criticism for his handling of major hurricanes. In 2018, he casually tossed rolls of paper towels into a crowd in San Juan, Puerto Rico, after the island was devastated by Hurricane Maria a year earlier.

In a 2019 incident, Trump used a marker to modify a forecast map of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and incorrectly suggest Hurricane Dorian could affect Alabama. An investigation found political influence led NOAA to release a statement backing Trump’s false claim and undermining its own forecast.

Ahead of Trump’s appearance in southern Georgia on Monday, downed trees and damaged roofs were scattered across Valdosta. Convoys of debris-removal trucks lined the interstate as people crowded truck stops to fill up gas containers and buy bottled water in bulk. Among the downed trees and flooded fields, hardware and home-improvement stores were packed.

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Trump spoke in the middle of downtown Valdosta in front of the severely damaged Chez What furniture store, a two-story brick building whose shorn-off wall has become a symbol of the storm’s devastation. Dozens of police cars from state and local agencies, as well as a contingent of Secret Service agents, patrolled the area, and a ring of semitrailer trucks was arranged in a circle around where Trump spoke and conducted interviews. Other officers blocked traffic and patrolled overpasses on nearby roads.

Trump brushed aside criticism that this was a drain on resources needed to help storm victims, saying that supplies he had brought vastly outweighed the impact of his travel.

“No, I brought a lot with us,” Trump said. “We brought many, many wagons of resources, just about everything you can think of. And [Christian leader] Franklin Graham is here and he’s helping us to distribute everything. But we brought a lot of things down. Trailers, many trailers of things.”

Trump praised the emergency response, and the support of Samaritan’s Purse, after receiving a briefing from FEMA and the National Guard.

“As you know, our country is in the final weeks of a hard-fought national election, but in a time like this, when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need, none of that matters,” Trump said outside the damaged furniture store while wearing a cap emblazoned with his campaign slogan. “We’re not talking about politics now.”