Did Kamala Harris ignore Hurricane Helene by not tweeting about it as a social media post claimed? No, that's not true: The first post about the natural disaster appeared on her official vice presidential account on X on September 25, 2024. That predated by four days the false statement about Harris supposedly failing to mention the hurricane, which only looked at her personal account.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on September 29, 2026. It said:
Not a single tweet from Kamala about Hurricane Helene. Dozens dead, millions without power, thousands lost their homes.
Her silence is deafening.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Sep 30 13:53:36 2024 UTC)
The post implied that Vice President Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, failed to address the major natural disaster, but that wasn't true. The post's supposed screenshot of search results was limited to a single Harris account, which focuses on her campaign. In reality, Harris had addressed Hurricane Helene by various online and offline means, including her vice-presidential account on X.
Harris' responses to Hurricane Helene
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service published the first warning about Hurricane Helene on September 24, 2024 (archived here).
On the next day (archived here) -- September 25, 2024, four days before the appearance of the claim reviewed here -- Harris wrote on X about the upcoming storm:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Sep 30 14:53:24 2024 UTC)
On September 26, 2024, at roughly 11 p.m. EDT, the hurricane made landfall in Florida (archived here).
After that, Harris posted about Hurricane Helene several times on her official vice-presidential account on X (@VP) (archived here), as a Google search (archived here) for relevant tweets from this account shows.
On September 27, 2024, Harris's official account on Facebook posted a video of her remarks (archived here) in Douglas, Arizona. At the 19:53 mark, she said:
Before I begin, I do want to say a few words about Hurricane Helene. I spoke this morning with our FEMA Administrator, Chris Well, and President Biden and I, of course, will continue to monitor the situation closely. We have mobilized more than 1,500 federal personnel to support those communities that have been impacted. We have food, water and generators that are ready for deployment, and we are working to restore power for millions of people who currently are experiencing outages, and I just want to stress and for the press that is here to those who are watching, the storm continues to be dangerous and deadly, and lives have been lost, and the risk of flooding still remains high. So I continue to urge everyone to, please, continue to follow guidance from your local officials.
(The video of the speech in Douglas is also available on CSPAN.)
On September 28, 2024, Harris's statement about Hurricane Helene's impact appeared on the White House website (archived here). It opened:
My heart goes out to everyone impacted by the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Helene. Doug and I are thinking of those who tragically lost their lives and we are keeping all those who loved them in our prayers during the difficult days ahead.
President Biden and I remain committed to ensuring that no community or state has to respond to this disaster alone ...
A search of the White House website for the keyword terms seen here (archived here) shows the two-page-long list of official statements made by the Biden-Harris administration between September 26, 2024, and September 30, 2024, to address the hurricane.
On September 29, 2024, Harris talked about the post-hurricane situation at a rally in Las Vegas. As seen at the 8:22 mark in a C-SPAN recording, Harris said:
In all seriousness, everyone, before I begin, I want to say a few words about Hurricane Helene ... we will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild.
(The video cited above was also published on Kamala Harris' official account on Facebook; its archived version is here).
As of this writing, @KamalaHarris (archived here) -- the account featured in the screenshot of a supposed search on X -- is mostly used for campaign messaging. That said, the @KamalaHarris account sometimes reposts tweets from @VP.
That happened in the case of Hurricane Helene, too.
On September 29, 2024, @KamalaHarris reposted a tweet from @VP:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Sep 30 14:29:20 2024 UTC)
The timing of the retweet is unknown, but the entry seen above appeared on @VP roughly at 11:09 p.m. on that day. Although it was published approximately two hours after the claim, it was not the first or only Harris remarks on Hurricane Helene.
This retweet, however, did not appear in a search on X. On September 30, 2024,Lead Stories replicated the search seen in the screenshot included with the claim from @Libsoftiktok, but the results (archived here) did not include the September 29, 2024, retweet from @VP on the @KamalaHarris account, even though the retweet had not been deleted.
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Sep 30 14:03:38 2024 UTC)
About the claim's source
@Libsoftiktok is a handle used across several social media platforms. As reported by The Washington Post (archived here), those accounts, initially started by a Brooklyn real estate salesperson, have grown into a network known for spreading false claims. Lead Stories debunked some of them here.
Learn more
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Kamala Harris can be found here. Our fact checks about the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
