The White House provided very few details on President Joe Biden’s trip to visit with victims, family members of those lost, and rescuers before Air Force One took off early Thursday morning, but his “Empathy Joe” demeanor was in full effect as he talked about his own family crises.
Local authorities revealed that morning that the confirmed death toll in the tragic condominium collapse had risen to 18, with 145 individuals still unaccounted for, and search and rescue operations were temporarily paused over concerns about the safety conditions in the rubble.
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Still, following a situational briefing with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, and other local and federal officials, the president and first lady Jill Biden spent hours meeting and thanking emergency responders and then consoling victims’ families.
Here are the three main takeaways from Biden’s Thursday visit.
One of Biden’s greatest strengths is rooted in his own trauma
It’s no secret that the president has faced horrors of his own throughout his 40-year political career.
He frequently talks about the deaths of his first wife, Neilia, their 1-year-old daughter, Naomi, and eldest son, Beau. He cited Beau’s military service and unrelated death while paying tribute to the families of U.S. service members during a speech at Royal Air Force Mildenhall just last month.
But Thursday marked the latest time Biden took it upon himself to meet with families grieving their own tragic losses behind closed doors, with no press visibility.
Though the White House provided a simple “readout,” or summary, of the Bidens’ nearly four-hour meeting with families affected by the collapse, during which the president and first lady spent time with each individual family unit, administration officials did not pass along any of the first couple’s words.
“We’re here for you as one nation, as one nation,” the president said in brief remarks following the lengthy meeting. “That’s the message we communicated.”
“It’s bad enough to lose somebody, but the hard part, the really hard part is to not know whether they’re surviving or not,” he added. “When the accident took my wife and my family, the hardest part was, are my boys going to get out, are they going to make it?”
“As you know, I’ve done a lot of these circumstances where I’ve met with families who have had great loss. What amazed me is the resilience and the absolute commitment and willingness to do whatever it took to find an answer. I walked away impressed by their strength,” Biden closed.
This trip, at least for the president, was not about optics but rather offering the grieving public a shoulder to lean on.
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All parties pushed politics aside to assist in the relief effort
The president opened the briefing with local officials by pointing out a silver lining of the tragedy: “When it’s really important … we come together. This is life and death.”
“We’re letting the nation know we can cooperate,” Biden continued. “I just got back from about 12 days in Europe. They wondered whether we can do this, and you’re doing it. I mean, just the simple act of everybody doing whatever needs to be done — it really makes a difference.”
DeSantis echoed the president’s statement, thanked him for being on top of the response effort “from day one,” and praised Biden for “not only [being] supportive at the federal level but” also keeping the “bureaucracy” out of it.
During that same briefing, the president clarified that the federal government won’t stop supporting the cleanup and search and rescue efforts and pledged to DeSantis to cover “100% of the costs.”
“The governor and the mayor have been completely open with me,” the president explained. “Whatever they’ve asked, I think we’ve been able to deliver, and I think there’s more that we can do.”
“I think there’s more we can do, including I think I have the power, and we’ll know shortly, to be able to pick up 100% of the costs for the county and the state for 30 days. I think I’m quite sure I can do that,” he continued. “There’s going to be a lot of pain and anxiety and suffering and even the need for psychological help in the days and months that follow. And so, we’re not going anywhere.”
Still, never let a crisis …
Despite the overt, bipartisan nature of the response, the president did take two public opportunities to raise the subject of climate change.
During his meet and greet with emergency responders, he pointed to the support the administration offered to firefighters on Wednesday as a means of addressing climate and rising temperatures in the Pacific Northwest.
He also speculated about climate change’s potential role in causing the collapse while fielding questions from reporters after his remarks.
“There are all kinds of discussions about whether or not they thought that water level rising and the impact it had,” Biden stated. “What’s interesting to me — I didn’t raise it — is how many of the survivors and the families talked about the impact of global warming, and they know exactly what they talk about, sea levels rising and the combination of that and the concern about incoming storms, incoming tropical storms.”
He did say that there isn’t “definitive” evidence of what called the collapse and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would continue its investigation into the tragedy.
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You can watch Biden’s entire closing remarks here.
