Ron DeSantis may not be a fan of Joe Biden’s policies, but even the Florida Governor had to admit the President has been helpful to his state in the wake of natural disasters.
“You know, Democrat in the White House with the media who would love to do it. You know, he could have tried to politicize it. I’ll give him credit. He didn’t try to politicize it,” DeSantis said, regarding Biden’s response to 2022’s Hurricane Ian.
Indeed, the President signaled cooperation, saying “the federal government will be here until it’s finished.” And DeSantis matched Biden’s amicability, telling a Fox News host that he had the “sense that the administration wants to help.”
“But you’ve got to be willing to work together to help folks. And so I think the response from local, state, and federal has been pretty seamless. And I think that’s a testament,” DeSantis added in a second Fox interview. “That we as a country can get things done when it counts.”
Biden and DeSantis had worked together in the wake of the Surfside condo collapse also, but that collaborative spirit didn’t recur from the Governor after 2023’s hurricane hit Florida.
DeSantis refused to meet the President when he came to the state in the wake of Hurricane Idalia, setting up the awkward optics of the state and federal chief executives not interfacing after that disaster.
And the two bickered long-distance over climate change after not meeting.
When Biden claimed that “climate change” contributed to tropical turbulence, DeSantis demurred, saying that storms had strafed Florida historically and that the “notion that somehow hurricanes are something new” is “just false.”
“We’ve got to stop politicizing the weather and stop politicizing natural disasters,” DeSantis said last year.
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