2023-09-03 01:42:01
US President Joe Biden watched from the sky as Hurricane Idalia impacted parts of Florida on Saturday before embarking on a walking tour of a city recovering from the storm.
Air Force One touched down at Gainesville Airport, where President and First Lady Jill Biden boarded Marine One for a helicopter flight to Live Oak, about 129 kilometers east of Tallahassee, the capital of Florida.
Idalia made landfall Wednesday morning along Florida’s sparsely populated Big Bend region as a Category 3 hurricane, causing widespread flooding and damage before moving north to inundate Georgia and the Carolinas.
On Friday, hours after Mr. Biden announced he would meet with state Governor Ron DeSantis, his office released a statement saying such a meeting was not on the agenda.
In these rural communities, shortly after the impact, the only security preparations necessary to stage such a meeting would halt ongoing recovery efforts, said DeSantis spokesman Jeremy Redfern, in a statement.
MM. Biden and DeSantis had met in Florida last year after Hurricane Ian hit, and in the summer of 2021 after the collapse of the Surfside condo building in Miami Beach.
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Ron DeSantis refused to meet Joe Biden while in Florida.
Photo : Archyde.com / MARCO BELLO
Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall said earlier this week that because of these events, Messrs. Biden and DeSantis are very collegial when it comes to working together to help Americans in need.
But since Mr. DeSantis positioned himself for the next presidential election as a candidate for the Republican primary, his relations with Mr. Biden have cooled.
Biden and DeSantis had initially agreed that helping storm victims take precedence over partisan considerations. But the Florida governor then suggested that a presidential trip would complicate disaster response logistics.
The governor reportedly told Mr Biden that it would be very disruptive to have the entire security apparatus accompanying the president, not least because it would be difficult to get him into some hard-hit areas.
What we want is to ensure that power is restored and relief efforts continue uninterrupted, DeSantis said.
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