President Joe Biden will travel to western Florida on Sunday to survey damage and visit with victims and first responders following this week’s deadly hurricane.
The president had been scheduled to travel to Germany and then Angola starting Thursday but postponed that trip earlier this week as Hurricane Milton approached to help coordinate the federal response to the storm.
He delivered remarks on the devastation both before and after Milton made landfall and pledged full federal support to state search and rescue and cleanup operations, as the administration had done following Hurricane Helene the week prior.
The lead-up to Milton did stir some controversy involving Biden, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), and Vice President Kamala Harris.
DeSantis refused to accept multiple calls from Harris following the previous storm, Hurricane Helene, and ahead of Milton’s landfall. The DeSantis team argued that the vice president was seeking to politicize the situation, and she, in turn, told reporters that the governor’s actions were “selfish” and “irresponsible.”
“For Kamala Harris to try to say that my sole focus on the people of Florida is somehow selfish is delusional,” DeSantis added during a Monday night interview on Fox News. “She has no role in this. In fact, she’s been vice president for 3 1/2 years. I’ve dealt with a number of storms under this administration. She has never contributed anything to any of these efforts, and so what I think is selfish is her trying to blunder into this.”
Biden and DeSantis have remained in constant contact throughout the week, according to White House officials. The Florida governor told reporters that the Biden administration had met the state’s assistance requests ahead of the storm.
DeSantis’s office did not say whether the governor will join Biden on Sunday during his trip to survey storm damage. He did join Biden in 2022 when the president traveled to Florida to survey damage caused by Hurricane Ian.
Biden said Friday that he would meet with DeSantis if he is free this weekend. “If he’s available, yeah,” Biden told reporters. “He’s been very cooperative. We got on very, very well.”
While Biden and DeSantis have been putting up a united front on storm response, the president has lambasted former President Donald Trump for spreading an “outpouring of lies” about the hurricane response.
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“Mr. President Trump,” Biden said Thursday. “Former President Trump. Get a life, man. Help these people.”
Trump and his allies continue to make claims about the Biden administration’s hurricane response that have been repeatedly debunked by media outlets. That list includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency diverting disaster relief funds to house illegal immigrants, refusing to use helicopters to airlift stranded hurricane victims from flood zones, and capping federal relief for victims at $750.
