Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had thoroughly rejected reports that he denied a phone call from Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the landfall of Hurricane Milton.
Florida’s gulf coast is bracing for Hurricane Milton — which strengthened to a category five storm on Monday — just a little over a week after Hurricane Helene made landfall in the area. The chance of a direct hit on the Tampa Bay area remains high, prompting evacuations in several Florida communities.
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On Monday afternoon, citing a “source close to the governor,” ABC News reported that DeSantis refused to take a phone call from Vice President Harris. The Disney-owned news outlet — which is run by a lifelong friend of Vice President Harris — reported that staffers view the vice president’s hurricane outreach as politically motivated.
Harris was asked about the report as she was boarding her plane on Monday. “You know, moments of crisis, if nothing else, should really be the moment that anyone who calls themselves a leader, says they’re going to put politics aside and put the people first. People are in desperate need of support right now. And playing political games at this moment in these crisis situations, these are the height of emergency situations, is just utterly irresponsible and it is selfish,” she said.
“And it is about political gamesmanship instead of doing the job that you took an oath to do, which is to put the people first.”
During a press conference a few hours later, DeSantis thoroughly denied reports that Harris called him. “No, I didn’t know she called me. I saw [the report], but I was not aware of that,” DeSantis said.
ABC News also insinuated that the Florida governor was ducking calls from President Biden as well. “So Biden called me a couple days ago with Helene when I was on the helicopter. I didn’t have any issues. They had helped us with what we’ve done. I’m not aware that he’s tried to call since then. Certainly hasn’t called my phone so I don’t know quite where they’re getting that information,” DeSantis told reporters.
“At the same time we got the approvals that we need. If there’s something else that we need you know I’ll hop on the phone very quickly whether that’s a FEMA administrator or the president and we will press the case to be able to get approvals for what we need in Florida but we have gotten approvals for everything that we’ve asked for.”
DeSantis then reiterated that the Harris Campaign’s framing is entirely false and inaccurate. “I didn’t know that she had called so I’m not sure who they called. They didn’t call me and their characterization of it was something that they did wasn’t anything that anybody in my my office did in terms of saying that it was political,” he said.
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