Exclusive | Kamala Harris slammed for ditching hurricane season preparedness briefings led by Mike Pence

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is at the center of a new storm for forgoing hurricane season preparedness briefings that were a staple of her predecessor Mike Pence’s annual calendar — with critics arguing the omission reflects how she may govern as president.Foes of the Democratic presidential nominee highlighted the missing briefings as the death toll from Hurricane Helene soared past 143 in the Southeast — while Harris scrambled back to Washington from Las Vegas Monday afternoon to attend a FEMA briefing and booked a trip Wednesday to storm-hit Augusta, Ga.“Harris hasn’t demonstrated the ability — or desire — to do the apolitical parts of the job that have a huge impact on our lives,” a former Pence aide told The Post as criticism of the flat-footed federal response to Helene became a campaign issue.

“Why should Americans trust her to start in the Oval Office?”Then-President Donald Trump and Pence held pre-hurricane season preparedness meetings with federal emergency officials in each of their four years in office.President Biden had similar meetings in 2021, 2022 and 2023 — though Harris doesn’t seem to have joined or held her own parallel events.Former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told The Post that annual drop-ins from the president and vice president are important and that the omission calls to mind Harris’ role as Biden’s point person on illegal immigration.“It just fits a larger pattern,” Wolf said.

“It doesn’t seem like she wants to roll up her sleeves and actually get into the governing of the country, which is hard to do.It’s not glamorous.

It’s a lot of briefings.”“My guess,” he added, “is she would act the very same way [as president], which is hands off — ‘I’m not going to run the country.I’m going to put a team together, and they’ll run it, and I’ll kind of talk about it,’ which is obviously a very different model than what President Trump did.”Wolf, wh...