Hurricane Idalia is a memory, but the Florida Governor and a rival of his in the 2024 presidential race continue to tussle over the aftermath.
On Newsmax Wednesday night, both Chris Christie and Ron DeSantis continued to litigate the correctness of DeSantis not appearing with President Joe Biden Saturday in Live Oak.
“You should never put politics above your job when you’re the Governor and hundreds of thousands of people in your state are suffering,” Christie counseled.
Christie went on to say that he “understood the politics of it, but your job is to be the governor of all the people of your state and especially when your state needs to be rebuilt and it needs to recover.” He then jabbed DeSantis for voting against aid for New Jersey in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.
“This is what happens to a lot of these folks: they’re in the house, they puff out their chest and they say absolutely not, no aid for any state other than mine. Sorry,” Christie said. “that’s not the way it should work.”
“What I’m suggesting is that when you’re the governor of your state and the president of the United States comes to inspect damage from a horrible natural disaster that it is your job to be there and to show him the damage and to explain to him what your people need directly. And the fact is when you don’t do that, the only reason not to do that is because you’re putting politics ahead of your job,” Christie added.
DeSantis had his say in response to previous Christie critiques in an earlier segment in the same hour.
“I was in the communities that were the hardest hit by the storm. And Joe Biden didn’t go to those areas, I think correctly, because the whole security apparatus would have shut down the recovery. So I was exactly where I needed to be,” DeSantis said.
“I was exactly where I needed to be to help the people of my state that were the hardest hit. That’s not playing politics. That’s called being a leader and doing what’s right,” he added.
Biden said in Live Oak, regarding DeSantis not meeting him Saturday, that he was “not disappointed … because he did help us plan this.”
“He sat with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and decided where we should go, where it would be the least disruption,” Biden said, noting he was in “frequent touch” with the Governor despite the lack of a face-to-face meeting Saturday.
Per the Saturday schedule from Gov. DeSantis’ Office, the Governor was engaged in efforts near where the hurricane made landfall earlier this week.
DeSantis’ day began at 9:30 a.m. with a briefing at the state Emergency Operations Center. From there, the Governor went to Keaton Beach for a walking tour at 11:45 and then a visit to the fire station half an hour later.
At 1 p.m., he visited a recipient of a temporary trailer from the Florida Department of Emergency Management. The Governor went to Horseshoe Beach from there, visiting a one-stop business resource center at 1:30, followed by a meal distribution with Chick-fil-a in the same community.
The President, meanwhile, was in Live Oak, where he got a briefing with U.S. Sen. Scott, before remarks at 4:15 p.m. that the Governor could have made while still keeping the schedule.
The Governor’s spokesman said Friday that the state couldn’t be assured of security for the President.
“We don’t have any plans for the Governor to meet with the President tomorrow,” Jeremy Redfern said. “In these rural communities, and so soon after impact, the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts.”
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