White House calls to offer storm support, but can't get Florida governor on the phone

With one hurricane in the rearview and another on the horizon, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been working directly with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but apparently leaving the White House on hold.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged during a briefing in Washington that the president and vice president have yet to speak to DeSantis since Hurricane Helene hit the state as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 26. But it’s not for lack of trying on their part, she said.

President Joe Biden called Florida’s governor on September 29, but the governor said he missed the call because he was in the air over Florida’s Big Bend touring the damage. DeSantis then declined an invite to meet the president when Biden flew into Tallahassee last week, with the governor explaining that he’d already set up an event regarding storm recovery in the Tampa Bay area.

DeSantis also ignored calls from Vice President Kamala Harris, NBC News reported on Monday.

“If you have the president and the vice president reaching out to help with assistance provided to your people, your constituents, the people who live in your state — to make sure we’re doing everything we need to do from a federal response, and we’re reaching out and offering our support, that’s up to the governor and whether he wants to respond to us or not,” Jean-Pierre said.

Jean-Pierre confirmed that the president and vice president had “made outreach, regarding, certainly Hurricane Helene,” but wouldn’t address why the White House had been unable to connect with the governor. “That is something for the governor to speak to himself,” said Jean-Pierre.

When asked by the Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau about Jean-Pierre’s comments, DeSantis said he wasn’t aware of any phone calls from the White House.

“Biden called me a couple days ago with Helene when I was on the helicopter,” he said. “I’m not aware he’s tried to call since then. Certainly didn’t call my phone, so I don’t know quite where they’re getting that information.”

He said if there was something he needed from the federal government, “I’ll hop on the phone very quickly, whether that’s a FEMA administrator or the president.”

When a reporter from Politico began to ask a question about whether people should suspend political activity in front of the storm, DeSantis quickly cut him off.

“You and your publication will twist anything that’s done to try to make a political agenda,” he said. “That’s what you do. That’s how you get your clicks.”

Harris, speaking briefly to reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Monday afternoon, addressed a question about DeSantis refusing her calls by saying that “people are in desperate need of support right now and playing political games at this moment in these crisis situations ... is utterly irresponsible.”

“And it is selfish and it is about political gamesmanship instead of doing the job you took an oath to do, which is to put the people first,” she said.

As the White House and DeSantis addressed questions about their contact on Monday, a new storm — this one a Category 5 — was bearing down on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Hurricane Milton is projected to make landfall overnight Wednesday with a storm surge that could nearly double what Tampa Bay residents experienced during Helene – which inundated much of Florida’s west coast.

FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell left North Carolina Monday to travel to Florida to help the state prepare, Jean-Pierre said.

“The good thing is that the FEMA administrator was able to connect with the governor yesterday,” Jean-Pierre said.

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(Miami Herald staff writer Max Greenwood contributed to this report.)

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