Ron DeSantis returned to ‘Hannity’ with Surfside rescue efforts underway

On Thursday night, Gov. Ron DeSantis returned to the Fox News Channel’s Hannity, as the first night of rescue efforts proceeded in the rubble of a fallen beachside high-rise in Surfside.

DeSantis, who did a pretaped interview with Mark Levin for a Sunday show airing at 4 p.m., did his second Fox hit of the day in the wake of the condo collapse.

The Governor did not address one piece of major news with Hannity: an executive order declaring a state of emergency in Miami-Dade, a precondition for federal aid through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A chyron on the screen noted the state of emergency, but none of the mechanics that led up to it, or the drama in Florida political circles.

In fact, the Governor did not mention President Joe Biden at all, a man referred to yet again Thursday night by Hannity as “President Sippy Cup.”

Biden, of course, urged DeSantis to ask for federal help during remarks at The White House hours before the executive order was distributed.

The Governor’s silence may seem deliberate, as the daylong delay of the order to some. That stretch of time, which wrapped after business hours Thursday, was a result of travel back to Tallahassee and the logistics of drafting and reviewing the executive order document, informed sources say, contending there was no conspiracy in the delayed document.

While DeSantis avoided directly acknowledging President Biden during the Hannity hit, other prominent Republicans did thank the President.

Sen. Marco Rubio thanked Biden and the White House during a presser before the Hannity episode aired.

The Governor did offer a description of what he saw on the scene, as well as revealing some of the path ahead in terms of figuring out why the seaside structure collapsed.

“When you’re there, you see, for example, there was balconies. The balconies were stacked one on top of the other, almost like a pancake. You look at that and you think ‘that is an unbelievable collapse for that to happen’,” DeSantis said.

When Hannity asked how a 40-year-old building could have collapsed, the Governor offered a discursive response, saying “we’re going to try to find the reason” for the condo collapse.

“This building was built in the early 1980s. That’s not necessarily like very old. We have much older buildings, of course,” DeSantis said.