President Joe Biden weighed in on Vice President Kamala Harris’ appearance on The View on Tuesday when he praised Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for “doing a great job” with preparations for Hurricane Milton.
Biden made these statements during a duel with the vice president, who less than 24 hours earlier criticized the Republican governor for The powerful Hurricane Milton is advancing towards Florida.
Harris and DeSantis clashed publicly on Monday when they accused each other of playing politics after DeSantis failed to take the vice president’s calls.
But in an update on hurricane preparedness on Tuesday, Biden said he had spoken to “every political leader in the region” and some of them more than once and shared that he gave DeSantis his personal phone number.
President Biden praised Gov. Ron DeSantis for hurricane preparations, putting him in an awkward spot with his vice president, who criticized the governor for not taking his calls. Biden’s comments came as he and Harris made dueling appearances on Tuesday.
The president said they’ve gotten an overwhelmingly positive response from everyone from ‘the governor of Florida to North Carolina.’
He said he spoke with DeSantis on Monday night and gave him his personal number to contact him at the White House.
‘The governor of Florida has cooperated. “He has said that he has received everything he needs,” Biden said in response to a question from a reporter.
“I spoke to him yesterday,” Biden said. “I said, ‘No, you’re doing a great job. Everything is being done well. We appreciate it.” And I literally gave him my personal phone number to call.
He said all the governors have been cooperative and supportive of what the team is doing.
It comes after Harris criticized DeSantis on Monday for not taking her calls as the hurricane approaches the state later this week.
“You know, moments of crisis, at the very least, should be the time when anyone who calls themselves a leader says they’re going to put politics aside and put people first,” Harris said.
The vice president made the comments while speaking to reporters in Joint Base Andrew prior to departure for New York City.
She said ‘Playing political games right now in these crisis situations, which are the height of emergency situations, is absolutely irresponsible and selfish.’
DailyMail.com confirmed that DeSantis did not take the vice president’s calls this week.
When asked during a news conference Monday about not taking a call, DeSantis said he didn’t even know she had called.
‘I didn’t know she called me. I saw it, but I wasn’t aware of it,” he told reporters in Tallahassee.
At the time, he also claimed he also didn’t know the president had called, but insisted the state had gotten everything it had asked for.
“I’ve been able to contact all the governors,” Biden said Tuesday when asked about the misinformation. ‘They are defending what they asked for. They indicate that they are satisfied with everything they get.”
Biden’s praise on Tuesday not only clashed with what the vice president said on Monday, but He also made his comments at the same time his vice president was appearing on The View.
It is the second time in recent days that Biden and Harris have appeared publicly at separate events at the same time.
When Biden made his surprise stop in the White House press briefing room for the first time on Friday, it came just as Harris was preparing to give a speech to firefighters and other union workers in Michigan.
CNN even accused the president of “upstage” the Democratic presidential candidate on air when the network cut to the president answering reporters’ questions while the vice president was also holding her event with a crucial group of voters.
But even as the couple held mourning events and Biden appeared to throw Harris under the bus with his comments, the vice president has had nothing but praise for her boss.
During her appearance on The View on Tuesday, Harris even went so far as to say that there are nothing she would change in terms of what Biden has done during his stay in the White House.
“I can’t think of anything,” Harris said.
