Florida Governor Ron DeSantis slammed the Biden administration and the mainstream media over the weekend for largely ignoring the tragic fire that burned a historic Hawaiian town to the ground.
DeSantis made the remarks during a press conference on Sunday while talking about his state’s recovery efforts from Hurricane Idalia.
“Do you trust the federal government to help, seeing what happened in Hawaii just a few weeks ago and in East Palestine a few months ago?” a reporter asked at the press conference in Yankeetown, Florida.
DeSantis responded, “I think that Maui is a total catastrophe, what happened there. And I don’t think we have all the answers to that. I think we should have all the answers to that. It’s interesting how incurious our corporate media is about what happened in Maui. I mean, I don’t see them interviewing parents who can’t find their kids and people we know, there’s a lot of people missing. So that was a total disaster, really, really heartbreaking to hear some of the stories, even though they’re not being publicized.”
The governor said that the situation in Maui and the Hurricane in Florida were different in large part because Florida, especially under his administration, extensively prepares for these types of events ahead of time.
“And really what the federal government’s role is, is just turning on programs that Congress has enacted over many, many years,” he said. “And so it’s basically serving as a checkbook to get people reimbursed for debris cleanup, to give people individual assistance. And so in that sense, I think that that has been turned on, I anticipate that that will go smoothly. But most of the nuts and bolts is done by our local communities, and by the state of Florida. And that’s really how it should be, disaster response is really bottom up.”
DeSantis said that things in Florida are so fine-tuned that the local governments in some respects play an even more important role than the state government when it comes to warning residents that their homes may be in the path of an incoming storm surge.
“And so you had that, you had the state managing and assisting and that’s really the bread and butter,” he said. “The checkbook from the feds is great and we’re going to – whatever resources are available as the governor, I’m going to pull those levers to be able to help Floridians. But we’re certainly not relying on the federal government to do the day to day heavy lifting.”
“We’re going to do that as Floridians, as people in the counties and municipalities and of course at the state level,” he concluded.
MUST WATCH: @RonDeSantis rips Biden and the media over the “total catastrophe” in Maui.
pic.twitter.com/lodv1PXvS1— Giancarlo Sopo (@GiancarloSopo) September 4, 2023