Joe Biden heads to Florida to survey storm damage. Will Gov. DeSantis meet him?

The era of good feeling between the White House and the Governor’s Mansion in the wake of Hurricane Milton may continue this weekend, as Joe Biden will be in the Sunshine State.

The President will, of course, be surveying Hurricane Milton damage. Details are sparse at the moment, but Biden will visit Florida on Sunday.

The President and Gov. Ron DeSantis have presented a united front when it comes to Florida’s latest natural disaster, with the White House immediately approving Florida’s pre-landfall declaration, a necessity to unlock federal aid.

Speaking on Hurricane Milton preparations earlier this week, Biden had nothing but nice things to say about DeSantis. Biden said the Governor was doing a “great job.”

“The Governor of Florida has been cooperative. He said he’s gotten all that he needs. I talked to him again yesterday,” Biden said. “I literally gave him my personal phone number to call.”

“Everything that we’ve asked for the administration has approved,” DeSantis said earlier this week ahead of the storm.

“There’s not anything that we’ve asked for that they haven’t. If there’s something that comes up, you know, I said I would not hesitate to get on the phone and call and ask directly on behalf of the people of Florida,” DeSantis added, affirming again that Biden said to “call or send a letter” if there were other needs.

The newly functional Biden-DeSantis dynamic, which appears to be the most constructive since 2022’s Hurricane Ian, presents a stark contrast to the ongoing feud between the Governor and Biden’s second-in-command.

The Governor took to Fox News Monday night and Tuesday morning to tell the rest of the story regarding his disconnect with “delusional” Kamala Harris. He took issue with the Vice President’s claim that the Florida Governor was playing “political games” and being “selfish” in not talking to her.

“She has no role in this process,” DeSantis said, saying the VP has “never contributed anything” to storm recovery efforts, and noting that he had talked to Biden earlier Monday evening.

An open question, though, is for how long DeSantis will praise Biden. As history shows, the Governor’s graciousness fades with time.

During a July segment on Fox News’ “Watters World,” Florida’s Governor discussed Biden’s “dementia” that he saw over the years.

“He’s come down to Florida after hurricanes, and I could tell that he wasn’t all there, and it’s gotten a lot worse in the last year, year and a half,” DeSantis said, referring to 2022.

DeSantis and Biden interacted after the 2021 Surfside Building Collapse and 2022 Hurricane Ian. However, during the response to 2023 Hurricane Idalia, DeSantis did not meet with the President, focusing on another area of the state hit by the storm.

Yet the then-presidential candidate found a way then to dispute Biden’s assertion that “nobody intelligent can deny the impact of climate change” in causing storms.

“So I think sometimes people need to take a breath and get a little bit of perspective here. But the notion that somehow if we just adopt, you know, very left wing policies at the federal level, that somehow we will not have hurricanes, that is a lie. And that is people trying to take what’s happened with different types of storms and use that as a pretext to advance their agenda on the backs of people that are suffering and that’s wrong and we’re not going to do that in the state of Florida.”