President Biden heads to Florida to see Idalia’s destruction

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President Joe Biden is heading to Florida on Saturday for a firsthand look at Hurricane Idalia’s destruction, but he won’t be seeing the state’s Republican governor and 2024 presidential hopeful, Ron DeSantis, who suggested such a meeting could hinder disaster response efforts.

“We don’t have any plans for the governor to meet with the president,” DeSantis spokesman Jeremy Redfern said in a statement. “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.”

Idalia made landfall Wednesday morning along Florida’s sparsely populated Big Bend region as a Category 3 storm, causing widespread flooding and damage before moving north to drench Georgia and the Carolinas. But Biden’s visit to see its effects threatened to be engulfed by political clashes since DeSantis’ statement came hours after the president himself earlier Friday that he would be meeting with the governor.

In response to DeSantis eventually preemptively calling off a meeting, White House spokeswoman Emilie Simons said, “President Biden and the first lady look forward to meeting members of the community impacted by Hurricane Idalia and surveying impacts of the storm.”