President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been “cooperative” with the federal government ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall on Wednesday.
The comment follows Vice President Kamala Harris’s accusation that DeSantis did not answer her phone call ahead of the hurricane.
Biden said that DeSantis, a Republican, “has been cooperative” and has “gotten all that he needs” from the White House.
“I literally gave him my personal phone number to call,” Biden added, referring to DeSantis. “So I don’t know—there was a rough start in some places, but every governor, every governor from Florida to North Carolina, has been fully cooperative and supportive and acknowledged what this team is doing.”
Biden also warned that Milton “could be the worst storm to hit Florida in over a century” as the now Category 5 storm heads across the Gulf of Mexico.
On Monday, Harris told reporters that DeSantis was being “utterly irresponsible” by not speaking with her in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida last month.
“Moments of crisis, if nothing else, should really be the moment that anyone who calls themselves a leader says they’re going to put politics aside and put the people first,” Harris said of DeSantis.
In response, DeSantis said that he was unaware that Harris attempted to contact him.
“I saw the news report—I didn’t know she tried to contact me. ... My focus is exactly where it should be,” DeSantis told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday.
“I’ve worked on these hurricanes under both President [Donald] Trump and President Biden. Neither of them ever tried to politicize it. She has never called on any of the storms we’ve had since she’s been vice president until apparently now,“ the governor said, adding that the vice president isn’t ”in the chain of command” for storm assistance.
The governor, meanwhile, said that the federal government has provided all the resources he has needed to deal with the storm.
“All of our requests have been answered,” he told Fox. “We have marshaled all state resources that are available to us. It’s going to be a very robust response, but it’s going to be a lot of damage, and we’re bracing for that.”
The White House confirmed Tuesday that Biden postponed his Oct. 10 to Oct. 15 trip to Angola and Germany to oversee storm preparation and response. The president urged those under evacuation orders to leave immediately, saying it was a matter of life and death.
The National Hurricane Center forecast storm surges of 10 to 15 feet along the coastline north and south of Tampa Bay, likely swamping low-lying areas. Forecasts of five to 10 inches or more of rainfall threatened flash flooding farther inland.
A direct hit on the bay would be the first since 1921, when the now-sprawling Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area was a relative backwater.
Tampa Mayor Jane Castor warned residents not to try to ride out the storm.
“Individuals that are in a single-story home, 12 feet is above that,” she said, referring to the predicted storm surge. “So if you’re in it, basically, that’s the coffin that you are in.”
Milton is expected to grow in size before making landfall, putting hundreds of miles of coastline within the storm-surge danger zone, said Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center. The area placed under hurricane warnings is home to more than 9.3 million residents.
