President Joe Biden traveled to Hawaii Monday, two weeks after deadly wildfires broke out across multiple islands, destroying countless buildings and killing more than 100 people in the process.
When the fires first started, Biden was vacationing at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and he has been criticized for returning to the beach for a second weekend, traveling to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and traveling to Lake Tahoe, Nevada, for another private family vacation before stepping foot in Hawaii.
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And though the president and first lady Jill Biden spent hours Monday in Lahaina, delivering remarks and visiting with survivors and first responders, criticisms from both Biden’s political opponents and Hawaiians themselves persist.
When the president travels to any state, it’s typical for gathered crowds to be filled with both supporters and critics, but scores of Hawaiians voiced their displeasure with the scope and speed of the president’s response.
Video obtained by TMZ showed angry survivors flipping the bird and shouting obscenities at Biden’s motorcade when it passed Monday.
“Wow, he’s finally here. 13 days,” one person can be heard shouting at the president. “Thanks for nothing. Fuck you!”
In addition to the timing of Biden’s visit, his administration has received heavy criticism for providing $700 one-time direct aid checks to Hawaiian households forced to evacuate. Critics say that, especially for families in Lahaina, a native Hawaiian heritage town that was totally destroyed by the fires, the payments won’t come close to paying for “immediate needs,” as the White House billed the checks, let alone beginning to rebuild destroyed homes and businesses.
Dozens of protesters held signs demanding more aid outside of various venues Biden visited Monday, and multiple Hawaiian politicians, including former Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, called the payments “a slap in the face.”
“Unfortunately, again, there is a trust deficit because not only have people not shown up, but it was almost a slap in the face of the people there when the big announcement from FEMA was, ‘Hey, we are going to give you a one-time payment of $700,'” Gabbard, who ran against Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement. “Anybody who has been to Hawaii knows that $700 does not go very far at a time when so many have lost everything.”
So far, Biden has approved more than $8 million in federal aid for nearly 3,000 Hawaiian households since the fires broke out in early August, but that figure has also come under scrutiny when looked at side by side with the recent supplemental funding request the president sent to Congress.
Of the $40 billion the Biden White House requested for the first quarter of the coming year, just $12 billion would go to refilling the Department of Homeland Security’s disaster relief fund, compared to $24 billion for future aid for Ukraine. The roughly $4 billion remaining would be set aside for southern border operations and boosting wildland firefighter pay.
The White House, and Biden himself, have maintained that the decision to wait to visit Hawaii came from a desire not to inhibit the cleanup and recovery effort, as the administration has stressed in past disaster responses. White House officials note that a presidential trip requires the shutting down of roads and commissioning of local law enforcement officials, all of which would be critical to cleanup operations.
White House officials also note that Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell visited Hawaii shortly after the fires came under control and has been leading a “robust” federal response, including holding daily briefings with Biden on the recovery efforts.
Still, Biden’s comments on Monday drew new ire from Republicans, specifically for mispronouncing the names of multiple Hawaiian lawmakers and comparing the Hawaii blazes to a kitchen fire at his home in Delaware.
“I don’t want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, what it’s like to lose a home. Years ago — now 15 years ago — I was in Washington doing Meet the Press. It was a sunny Sunday, and lightning struck at home on a little lake that’s outside of our home — not a lake, a big pond — and hit a wire and came up underneath our home into the heating ducts,” the president stated. “To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my ‘67 Corvette, and my cat.”
However, a 2004 local news story explained that the event at Biden’s Delaware home was a “small fire” that was “contained” to the kitchen.
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“Luckily, we got it pretty early,” Cranston Heights Fire Company Chief George Lamborn said at the time. “The fire was under control in 20 minutes.”
“Mere hours after touching down, Biden was headed back to Lake Tahoe to resume his second weeklong vacation in the past month,” Republican National Committee spokesman Jake Schneider said in a statement. “There’s a reason furious Maui residents lined the road with signs accusing Biden of being ‘too late’ — because he was.”
