With those comments, Biden offered a nod to the kind of bipartisanship he once pledged to restore to politics, while at the same time extolling a man who could soon seek to oust him from the White House.
DeSantis, who has previously assailed Biden as weak and has threatened to send planeloads of undocumented immigrants to the president’s home in Delaware, said Biden had been an admirable partner as Florida faced its deadliest storm in decades.
“I want to thank President Biden,” DeSantis said before going on to praise the Federal Emergency Management Agency under the president’s leadership. “We were very fortunate to have good coordination with the White House and with FEMA.”
The hurricane-related detente between the president and the governor with presidential aspirations marked a rare moment of cross-party comity in a charged political climate defined by name-calling, threats and trolling. DeSantis has seen his star rise as he has leaned in to pugilistic politics, while Biden has described the decline in decorum as a threat to the nation’s soul.
Both men may have seen opportunity in embracing cooperation in the aftermath a deadly natural disaster. For Biden, who repeatedly used the word “united” on Wednesday, it was a chance to make good on his campaign pledge to calm tensions and work across the aisle.
For DeSantis, it was a chance to pivot from a combative style of governing embraced by former president Donald Trump and show that he could be presidential when the moment called for it. It’s a skill that some of Trump’s supporters say he lacked, perhaps costing him the presidency. The governor, standing before the presidential seal on a lectern that had been set up for Biden, also used the meeting to praise his own handling of the hurricane.
“One of the things you’re seeing in this response is that we’re cutting through the bureaucracy,” DeSantis said as he introduced Biden.
Before their official remarks, the two men spent more than an hour together in a storm-ravaged marina in a part of the state that had been leveled by surging waters and fierce winds. They only spoke directly for a few minutes, shaking hands but keeping largely out of earshot of reporters. The rest of the time, they were separately working their way around the marina, speaking to local officials and hurricane survivors. The scene, against the backdrop of a damaged seafood cafe and a capsized boat, gave voters a chance to see Biden and DeSantis side by side.
The governor, 44 and more than three decades younger than the 79-year-old president, was more animated with his hands during the interactions and spoke with a more forceful voice. Biden, known for being a tactile politician with a knack for comforting those experiencing grief, took off his coat and donned aviator sunglasses as he shook hands with the storm survivors and local officials he met. At one point, he draped his arm around a woman, who hugged him back.
A photographer captured an image of Biden, the woman and a man in a “Florida Cracker” T-shirt — all smiling — with DeSantis standing alone in the foreground, wearing a dour expression.
Before meeting with DeSantis, Biden surveyed the storm’s aftermath by…
Read More: Biden, DeSantis meet in Florida, pledging bipartisanship on Ian relief
