CNN
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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.
CNN has asked the White House and DeSantis’ office for an explanation of the discrepancy.
On Thursday, Biden’s homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall told reporters during a White House press briefing that the trip was still being planned, but that “every time I’ve been to Florida with the president, he has met – of course – with Gov. DeSantis and traveled the disaster zone, whether it’s from last year’s hurricane or when the Surfside condominium building collapsed.”
In a statement Friday, White House spokesperson Emilie Simons told CNN Biden’s visit was being planned to disrupt the recovery efforts from the storm as little as possible. Idalia made landfall early Wednesday morning.
“President Biden and the First Lady look forward to meeting members of the community impacted by Hurricane Idalia and surveying impacts of the storm,” Simons said. “They will be joined by Administrator (Deanne) Criswell who is overseeing the federal response. Their visit to Florida has been planned in close coordination with FEMA as well as state and local leaders to ensure there is no impact on response operations.”
DeSantis told reporters earlier in the day that he had spoke with Biden over the phone and raised concerns about pulling resources away from the recovery efforts to provide security for the visit, especially since it will take place in a part of the state where access was already limited before Idalia arrived.
“The hardest hit communities, it would be very disruptive to have the whole kind of security apparatus that goes, because there’s only so many ways to get into these places,” DeSantis said at a briefing in Tallahassee. “And so what we want to do is make sure that the power restoration continues, that the relief efforts continue, and that we don’t have any interruption in that.”
But a White House official told CNN on Friday that DeSantis did not raise those concerns with Biden when the two spoke on the phone Thursday.
This story has been updated with additional details.
