Gov. DeSantis Responds To Biden's Comments During Visit To Florida

 

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is asked about President Biden's comments on global warming during his visit to Florida.

On Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was asked by a reporter to respond to President Biden's statements about climate change when the president visited Florida. DeSantis was holding a press conference about the ongoing recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane IAN.

They touted his efforts to promote Florida's resilience infrastructure. DeSantis is a frequent critic of President Biden and his correspondents, or lack thereof, earned by the negative press in the days leading up to Hurricane IAN. But Biden's visit, however, offered an amicable moment between the two politicians, who toured the damage together with their wives. DeSantis is currently running for re-election and is considered a potential 2024 presidential contender.

A journalist asked DeSantis: When Biden was here last week, he was talking about global warming and climate change. You're more focused on resiliency. Is there a difference there? Can you speak to that?

DeSantis responded and said:

Well, if you look, we did a big effort called Resilient Florida that I launched, and we got over a billion in funding over two years, and that was just basically recognizing that this state because we're a peninsula in an area where a lot of tropical activity, that this is something you know that we've had to deal with throughout our history. We've had stretches where we've had significant major hurricanes. A hundred years ago, 80-90 years ago, the most powerful hurricane that never hit Florida was in the 1930s, a Labor Day hurricane.

The most deadly was in the 1920s, the Okeechobee hurricane, so what we're trying to do is create infrastructure and protection that are going to be able to withstand extreme weather events. You've seen some success already. With a lot of the stuff that was done on Fort Myers Beach with the electrical, there was not nearly as much destruction as there would have been 20 years ago with inferior materials.

You look at some of these subdivisions here in Lee County. Granted, they got flooded, which is bad, but you didn't see mass subdivisions of new construction just reduced to rubble, so I think that that's something that's really significant. I think after Hurricane Andrew, Florida updated its building codes. We've now done a lot in my term as governor to help with some of the critical infrastructures. It does matter, and it does make a difference, and I think people are seeing that in the afternoon.

When you look at some of the older mobile homes that didn't fare as well, but when you look at some of the newer mobile homes, you actually had most of these newer mobile homes. You go out here and you go east. There's a mobile home relatively new on the right. A lot of them did very well, because there's a consciousness about understanding that the infrastructure sure has got to be strong.