A spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that there are no plans for the Republican to meet with President Joe Biden when he travels to Florida on Saturday, contradicting comments Biden made earlier in the day indicating they would.

“We don’t have any plans for the Governor to meet with the President tomorrow,” DeSantis spokesperson Jeremy Redfern told CNN Friday. “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.”

Biden had told CNN earlier Friday that “yes,” he did plan to meet with the Florida governor while surveying damage from Hurricane Idalia in the state over the weekend.

  • @atzanteol
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    2910 months ago

    Frankly they both just need to listen to FEMA and other agencies to know how bad it is, what is needed for funding, etc.

    The whole “visit the scene” thing is theater.

    • TigrisMorte
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      2010 months ago

      A Leader needs to be seen to care for the People being led to have the faith to rebuild. Soulless bureaucrats in far away place to do not instill such faith.

      • @atzanteol
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        -1010 months ago

        I don’t buy that. It’s mostly to stop the opposition from saying “look the president doesn’t care about you”.

        • TigrisMorte
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          1310 months ago

          There is much History (see any Historic account of a Leader rallying his People, as per Joan D’arc, or for a more recent example see Present day Ukraine) to back up my view and yours assumes bad faith which must first be proven.

          • @atzanteol
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            010 months ago

            Whenever a president fails to visit a disaster site in a timely manner the opposition goes nuts over it. Yet nobody expects the president to lead us into battle. They can but don’t - because the opposition doesn’t want to either. So they both stay silent about it.

            https://www.bostonherald.com/2023/08/16/editorial-biden-too-slow-on-the-draw-over-maui-disaster/

            “He didn’t get there fast enough” is a common criticism. And almost all of the criticism comes from the opposition. It’s political now.

                  • @atzanteol
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                    110 months ago

                    I’ll take that as a compliment.

      • @atzanteol
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        910 months ago

        No agency, person, organization, etc anywhere ever has a “spotless record”.

      • @[email protected]
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        210 months ago

        I used to know a FEMA worker and he claimed that the tinfoil hat crowd reaches out to them about once a week on average.

    • ivanafterall
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      710 months ago

      Over-the-shoulder photo looking out of a helicopter.

      “Hmm, yes, okay, I see now what you meant by disaster. Thank you for showing me.”

      • @atzanteol
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        410 months ago

        Tha fuck you talking about?

        • flipht
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          610 months ago

          They’re asking you why you felt the need to “both sides” this as if Biden and desantis aren’t listening to experts/playing politics, while Biden is doing everything correctly. It’s disingenuous to act like the one person who is doing the right thing also needs to work on doing better, while the other is actively making it worse and trying to blame everyone but himself.

          • @atzanteol
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            -110 months ago

            I didn’t say anything like what you think I said. Take a breath, stop being a partisan hack, and read it again.

            • @[email protected]
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              210 months ago

              IDK man it wasn’t clear and I asked you a question. The way you reacted tho is fucking telling tho lol

              • @atzanteol
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                110 months ago

                Telling of what? You’ve misunderstood everything else. I’d be surprised if you got anything right

                I didn’t “both sides” anything. Only a partisan hack would see it that way.