'We didn’t answer': DeSantis not taking VP Harris’ calls about storm because they 'seem political'

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is refusing calls from Vice President Kamala Harris as Hurricane Milton bares down on the Florida panhandle — one week after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc on the state, NBC News reports.

Hurricane Milton on Monday rapidly intensified to a category 5 storm with sustained winds up to 175 miles per hour, CNN reports. It is forecast to make landfall on Florida’s Golf Coast Wednesday. This storm comes just a over a week after Hurricane Helene turned “into an almost unimaginable disaster that stretched more than 500 miles inland from the Florida coast,” according to The Conversation.

A DeSantis aide told NBC News the Florida governor is declining Harris’ calls about storm recovery because the “[seem] political."

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“Kamala was trying to reach out, and we didn’t answer,” the DeSantis aide said, according to NBC News.

That aide also said that, to their knowledge, DeSantis has not spoken with President Joe Biden about storm recovery. Biden’s team, NBC News reports, “had invited DeSantis to [an] event in north Florida" that the governor did not attend.

DeSantis’ refusal to take calls from the White House comes as Donald Trump continues to make false claims about the federal response in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

“Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal immigrants,” Trump said Thursday at a rally in Michigan.

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Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell on Sunday rebuffed the former president’s attack, telling ABC “This Week” that the claim is “frankly ridiculous and just plain false.”

“This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” she added. “It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people.”

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Read the report at NBC News.