WASHINGTON — It’s the sort of split-screen moment that no White House relishes.
While Maui counted its dead Sunday, President Joe Biden sat on the beach in Delaware, rode his bicycle and said little about the deadliest wildfire to hit the U.S. in a century.
"We're looking at it," he said, pedaling past reporters who shouted at him as he whizzed by.
Biden first delivered remarks last Thursday about the catastrophic fire in Hawaii. The next day, his son became the subject of a federal special counsel investigation. And since then, Biden has said virtually nothing to the media — not about Hunter or the fires or anything else.
Four days of silence haven't gone unnoticed — not by the reporters who pressed White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday about why he has not spoken out more or by Republicans, who piled on criticism that Biden was failing to address the devastation, or by conservative media, who on Tuesday juxtaposed pictures of Biden at the beach with video of the fires.
Donald Trump, in a video posted between attacks on the prosecutor who indicted him Monday, released a two-minute video criticizing Biden’s response to the fires.
“It is a disgraceful thing that Joe Biden refuses to help or comment on the tragedy in Maui,” he said. Trump also criticized the Democratic governor and referred dismissively to global warming.
The White House points to the response on the ground as proof that the Biden administration is taking the catastrophe seriously. Nearly 500 federal workers are deployed in Hawaii. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has provided 50,000 meals, 75,000 liters of water, 5,000 cots and 10,000 blankets. The Coast Guard and the Navy’s 3rd Fleet supported response efforts, and the Marines provided Black Hawk helicopters to fight fires.
Biden has also spoken with Gov. Josh Green, Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz, Hawaii Democrats and other officials.
Hirono, whose office didn’t respond to a request for comment, has defended the White House's response to the fires, tweeting that she was "glad to see so many on the right are so concerned about what’s happening in Hawaii" and asking Republicans to support more funding.
Residents said over the weekend that they were getting more help from volunteers than from the government, The New York Times reported.
“We won’t be lectured by Republican officials in Washington who are doubling down on denial of the climate crisis that is devastating red and blue states, who attempted to slash the wildfire response budget, and who defended the Trump administration cutting Puerto Rico off from hurricane relief,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.
With the death toll expected to continue to climb, Biden flew to the 2024 battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday to mark the first anniversary of an ambitious climate change package that is central to his campaign message. He spoke for five minutes at the start of his remarks about the fires.
“I don’t want to get in the way. I’ve been to too many disaster areas,” Biden said of the considerations that go into making the trip. “But I want to go and make sure we got everything they need. I want to be sure we don’t disrupt the ongoing recovery efforts.”
Critics have seized on what they see as a potential vulnerability.
The Republican National Committee sent out an email Monday with a picture of Biden sitting in a beach chair in a sandy stretch of Delaware while “Hawaiians are left to fend for themselves.”
Doug Heye, a former RNC official, said Biden’s relative silence was “surprising” and “disappointing.”
Biden had “always been portrayed as somebody who would be a great consoler-in-chief,” Heye said. “And, you know, here we have the deadliest wildfire in our nation’s history, and he’s been silent.”
