For conservative-leaning media, Joe Biden’s trip to Lahaina was self-serving and out of touch. For liberal-leaning legacy media outlets, Biden was compassionate and there to grieve with the population of the historic Hawaiian town on the island of Maui.
The town of 13,000 people was devastated by the wildfire caused by serious land mismanagement and winds from Hurricane Dora.
Biden’s initial comment about the disaster of, “No Comment” was panned.
Hawaii Governor: 1,050 Missing in Lahaina
At least 114 have died.
“More than a thousand are unaccounted for, about 1,050,” Hawaii Governor Josh Green told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday after wildfires ripped through the island of Maui, devastating the town of Lahaina. “It’s going to take several weeks still.
He continued, noting that “some of the challenges are going to be extraordinary.”
Recovery efforts could take weeks. Many more individuals might have perished in the flames, and it may not be known exactly how many people died for some time.
“We do have extreme concerns that because of the temperature of the fire,” Green said, “… [T]he remains of those who have died, in some cases, may be impossible to recover meaningfully. So there are going to be people that are lost forever. And right now we’re working obviously, with the FBI and everyone on the ground to make sure that we do what we can to assess who’s missing.”
Last Thursday, Ella Sable, a local on the island, told The Daily Mail she was disappointed in Biden.
“It’s really affecting me because where’s the president? I mean, aren’t we Americans, too? We’re part of the United States. Why are we getting put in the back pocket?” Sable asked.
Joe Biden Compares Magnitude of Disaster to Personal Loss
Conservative-leaning outlets focused on Biden’s effort to refocus the tragedy back on himself.
“Lightning struck at home, on a little lake that’s outside of our home—not a lake, a big pond,—and hit a wire that came up underneath our home into the heating ducts and air conditioning ducts,” Biden said. “To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my ‘67 Corvette, and my cat.”
This self-referential stance was panned by Republicans on Twitter.
“Joe Biden feels the pain of Lahaina talking about his kitchen fire,” Fox & Friends Weekend host Will Cain wrote on X.
The popular LibsofTikTok account on X slammed Biden for being self-referential.
“Kids in Maui were burned alive. So far, this is how Biden responded: – went on 2 vacations – said ‘no comment’ – fell asleep at an event honoring victims – compared a small house fire to thousands losing everything – cracked jokes about his corvette and the ground being hot – made it all about himself,” the post said.
Biden Self-References Ignored in Media
By contrast, HuffPost ignored Biden’s comment about his beloved Corvette and instead cast him as a concerned consoler-in-chief publishing part of his remarks in which he said, “I know the feeling that many of the people in this town, that hollow feeling in your chest like you’re being sucked into a black hole … It’s one thing to know, but it’s quite another thing to have to wait to wonder whether your family member is going to be OK.”
Biden Maui Response Compared With Hurricane Katrina
Following Hurricane Katrina the coverage of George W. Bush’s handling of the disaster after he flew aboard Air Force One over the damage was merciless.
At least one historian argued that Biden’s initial response was similarly flatfooted.
“I think President Biden made a mistake not to address the nation about Hawaii in a more forthright, dramatic and immediate fashion,” Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian and author of a book about the government’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, told The Washington Post.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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