GREENVILLE, N.C. >> Kamala Harris used an appearance Sunday before a largely Black church audience in battleground North Carolina to call out Donald Trump for spreading misinformation about the government’s hurricane response. President Joe Biden visited Florida for the second time this month to survey storm damage.

Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, did not speak Trump’s name, but he is most prominent among those promoting false claims about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricanes Milton and Helene. Florida was in the path of both storms, with Helene also hitting North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, while Milton headed for the open Atlantic.

The vice president spoke at the Koinonia Christian Center about the “heroes” all around who are helping residents without regard to political affiliation.

“Yet, church, there are some who are not acting in the spirit of community, and I am speaking of these who have been literally not telling the truth, lying about people who are working hard to help the folks in need, spreading disinformation when the truth and facts are required,” Harris said.

“The problem with this, beyond the obvious, is it’s making it harder, then, to get people life-saving information if they’re led to believe they cannot trust,” she said. “And that’s the pain of it all, which is the idea that those who are in need have somehow been convinced that the forces are working against them in a way that they would not seek aid.”

Harris said they are trying “to gain some advantage for themselves, to play politics with other people’s heart break, and it is unconscionable,” she said. “Now is not a time to incite fear. It is not right to make people feel alone.”

“That is not what leaders, as we know, do in crisis,” she said.

Trump made a series of false claims after Helene struck in late September, including saying that Washington was intentionally withholding aid from Republicans in need across the Southeast. The former president falsely claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency had run out of money to help them because it was spent on programs to help immigrants who are in the United States illegally.

Before Harris spoke in church, Biden was surveying hurricane damage on a helicopter flight between Tampa and St. Pete Beach on the Gulf Coast. From the air, he saw the torn-up roof of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. On the ground, the president saw waterlogged household furnishings piled up outside flooded homes. Some houses had collapsed.

The president said he was thankful that Milton was not as bad as officials had anticipated, but that it still was a “cataclysmic” event for many people, including those who lost irreplaceable personal items. He also praised the first responders, some of whom had come from Canada.

“It’s in moments like this we come together to take care of each other, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans,” Biden said after he was briefed by federal, state and local officials, and met some residents and responders. “We are one United States, one United States.”

Harris opened her second day in North Carolina by speaking at the Christian center in Greenville, part of her campaign’s “Souls to the Polls” effort to help turn out Black churchgoers before the Nov. 5 election.

The vice president later spoke to roughly 7,000 supporters at a Sunday afternoon rally at East Carolina University’s arena, suggesting that Trump’s team has stopped him from releasing medical records or debating her again because they might be “afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable.”

The North Carolina appearances mark the start of a week that will find Harris working to shore up support among Black voters, a key constituency for the Democratic Party. She is counting on Black turnout in competitive states such as North Carolina to help her defeat Trump, who has focused on energizing men of all races and has tried to make inroads with Black men in particular.

On Tuesday, she will appear in Detroit for a live conversation with Charlamagne tha God, a prominent Black media personality.

Black registered voters have overwhelmingly favorable views of Harris and negative views of Trump despite his attempts to appeal to nonwhite voters, according to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But the poll also shows that many Black voters aren’t sure whether Harris would improve the country overall or better their own lives.

In Florida, which Biden had visited the Big Bend region on Oct. 3 after Helene struck, the president announced $612 million for six Department of Energy projects in hurricane-affected areas to bolster the region’s electric grid. The money includes $47 million for Gainesville Regional Utilities and $47 million for Switched Source to partner with Florida Power and Light.