It took five days after Hurricane Helene made landfall before President Biden toured the devastation, the same number of days that President George W. Bush waited before visiting the site of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a widely decried delay that left an indelible stain on his presidency.
So far, however, Mr. Biden has escaped the same widespread media condemnation, with a few exceptions.
“I think the optics of this over the weekend for Biden-Harris have been pretty poor,” said CNN political analyst Scott Jennings. “North Carolina is underwater. These people are devastated and struggling, but you’ve got Biden at the beach.”
He and other critics noted that Mr. Biden was at his beach house in Delaware on Sept. 27 — Hurricane Helene made landfall at 11:10 p.m. Sept. 26 — while Vice President Kamala Harris was at political fundraisers in California.
“You’ve got Biden at the beach then saying, ‘What do you want from me? I got on the phone while I was at the beach,’” said Mr. Jennings in a Tuesday segment. “You’ve got Harris out raising money on the campaign and then taking a photo on a plane.”
He recalled how Mr. Bush was ripped for a photo on Air Force One showing him flying over the disaster area left by Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane that walloped the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts as a Category 3 storm in August 2005.
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“I remember George W. Bush was pilloried for having a photo taken from Air Force One,” Mr. Jennings said. “She’s got a photo on a plane, and the headphones don’t appear to be connected to the phone, and the paper looks like it’s blank. So it looked like a staged sort of thing.”
North Carolina - underwater. Biden - at the beach. Harris - raising money & taking staged photos. Rough hurricane optics for this administration, as we discussed last night on @cnn. pic.twitter.com/heqEVRq5lS
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) October 1, 2024
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre bristled after being asked by Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy why the president and vice president weren’t in Washington when Helene hit.
Ms. Jean-Pierre said, “The president did exactly what a president in this moment needs to do, which is directing his team to take action.”
She said that the FEMA administrator was brought Thursday to the White House because “the president wanted to make sure that we were sending a message out to folks who were going to be impacted by the hurricane.”
SEE ALSO: Harris surveys Helene damage in Georgia, says government is ‘here for the long haul’
Asked why he and Ms. Harris weren’t at the White House “commanding this,” Mr. Biden insisted Monday that “I was commanding. I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday and the day before as well. I command on the telephone.”
Mr. Bush was at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, when Katrina struck on Aug. 29, flooding New Orleans after breaking through the floodwalls and resulting in 1,392 fatalities.
He cut his vacation short, returned to the White House on Sept. 1, and arrived in Mobile, Alabama, to tour the disaster site on Sept. 2, according to a CBS News timeline, but the damage to his reputation had been done.
Hurricane Helene hit Florida as a Category 4 hurricane but saved most of its devastation for western North Carolina, where the streams were already swollen by days of rain.
The death toll from Helene climbed Wednesday to 175, with hundreds still missing, making it the second most deadly U.S. hurricane of the 21st century after Katrina.
Brian Cavanaugh, who served as National Security Council senior director in the Trump administration, called Mr. Biden’s decision to remain in Delaware “emblematic of this administration’s failed attempt to lead.”
“The absence of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during the height of the disaster response has set a troubling tone, raising questions about the federal government’s ability to handle large-scale emergencies and putting a spotlight on the critical role that leadership plays during moments of crisis,” he said in a Tuesday op-ed for the Daily Signal.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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