But in the middle of all that, Joe Biden caused a stir when he wouldn’t say anything when asked about the rising number of deaths.
“After some hours relaxing on Rehoboth Beach, Biden was questioned about the growing number of fatalities in Hawaii. ‘No comment,’ he replied before he headed home,” Bloomberg’s Justin Sink wrote on X.
After that, we saw the video where he was smiling.
As we said, the White House’s reaction wasn’t great. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Senator Maizie Hirono the wrong gender and spelled her name wrong. She also stumbled over the name of Senator Brian Schatz. Those are two Hawaiian senators. People are likely to think that you do not even care and that you are simply just phoning it in when you do not even bother with getting people’s names correct.
But Jean-Pierre did say that it was “devastating devastation.”
But has Biden talked to any of the people who have been hurt? Not really.
Biden’s cold answer to the Maui question shocked and upset many people, such as Hawaii Democrat Mark Kaniela Ing, who used to be a state representative.
“I worked hard for you. Now, when dozens of my friends, family members, and neighbors are dying. This?” Kaniela Ing wrote in a post which he later took down.
Ing said that the answer was “shocking” and not like him.
“When things like this happen, it is really the time to—if you do the sort of work I do, when the wave crests, you have got to paddle the hardest,” he said. “When terrible things happen like this, it’s so shocking to see individuals going about their lives as normal. On the one hand, you do not want everybody to be sad all the time, but on the other hand, how can you simply keep going like that?”
“I believe that everyone deserves to have some time to take care of themselves and relax, but as a leader, you have to be ready at any given moment to show compassion and comfort to people who are going through a lot of pain right now,” he said.
“Kaniela Ing said that he took down his post since he thought that Biden’s conversation with reporters might have been more complicated than was first reported.”
“It’s very disappointing, even if it wasn’t as rude as was first said,” he said. “I would have hoped for more.”
He said, “He needs to speak about the things he’s done as well as what he’s going to do. It’s great that people are talking and giving words of peace and comfort. To be honest, I’m not too worried about that. I want to see something happen.”
