Hours after the White House announced that President Joe Biden on Thursday morning would fly to three Florida cities to survey the damage from Hurricane Helene, Gov. Ron DeSantis' team posted that the Florida governor would have a press conference in a different county at the same time as Biden's arrival.
Online rumblings whisper that this is a snub toward Pres. Biden, who the Governor has repeatedly and frequently criticized.
Gov. DeSantis, in a terse response to a reporter asking if there's a particular reason why he's not with Biden, attempted to quell the rumors.
"Nope. We had this planned," he replied at his Manatee County press conference, before turning to the next reporter for a question on one of his three newly-announced executive orders.
While DeSantis met up with Biden after Hurricane Ian in 2022, he opted out of traveling with the President during last year's Hurricane Idalia visit. This year, Biden traveled to Tallahassee, Perry, and Keaton Beach—where he met up with Republican Sen. Rick Scott, a former Florida Governor lauded for his disaster recovery efforts.
There is no love lost between the two political powerhouses: in the past year, DeSantis, a Republican, has sued the Democratic Biden Administration over higher education policies, sued them over new Title IX rules, and swiped at the Biden-Harris duo every chance he can, usually over the weakened Southern border, DEI policies, or more recently, spiking inflation.
During his Thursday morning conference, he implored the Biden-Harris Administration to address the East Coast dockworkers' strike, which will likely lead to billions in damages and supply chain disruptions—two instances that spell out disaster for the Southeast U.S. still scrambling to recover from a Category 4 Hurricane Helene that claimed at least 204 lives across six states.
After Louisiana's Hurricane Katrina and Puerto Rico's Hurricane Maria, it's one of the deadliest hurricanes in living memory.
"It really is incumbent upon the Biden-Harris Administration to do everything in their power to ensure that these goods are where they need to be," DeSantis said. "We need to accelerate. We have no time for delays. Biden-Harris has a responsibility to stand up for the storm victims, stand up for the people who have had their homes damaged or have lost their homes, and make sure they have what they need to get back on their feet."
On Tuesday, less than a week after Helene rocked the Big Bend, 45,000 East Coast dockworkers from Texas through Maine went on strike, demanding higher wages and more protections from automation taking their jobs. It's projected that this will cost $5 billion a day, and for every 36 hours the strike lasts, it equals a week of supply chain disruptions.
As of Thursday afternoon—one week after Helene's landfall—over 900,000 Americans are still without power. The majority of them live in South Carolina (over 361,000), while the majority of Helene-induced deaths are in North Carolina (at least 73 people).
