VICTOR JOECKS: Biden at beach house as Appalachia floods

Hurricane Helene was a devastating storm, but it wasn’t powerful enough to drive President Joe Biden away from his Delaware beach house.

The massive hurricane hit land on Thursday night. It was around 350 miles wide with winds reaching 140 mph. It contained an unfathomable amount of rain, sweeping its way through Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

By Saturday, pictures and video showed the extent of the devastation. Asheville, North Carolina, and the surrounding area were particularly hard hit. The flooding came up to the roofs of some buildings. The deluge swept away homes, bridges and roads. Mudslides and downed trees cut people off from electricity and civilization.

Helene killed more than 130 people.

On Saturday, the president was at his beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., according to his public schedule. He spent Sunday there, too. On Monday, a reporter asked Biden why he didn’t return to the White House to command the government’s response.

“I was commanding it,” Biden said. “I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday and the day before as well. I command. It’s called a telephone.”

The response has left much to be desired. A woman told NBC that there is no FEMA presence in many towns and villages. On Monday, Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer said her town still needed drinking water and food. Ordinary Americans have heroically tried to fill in the gaps using private helicopters and mules.

Vice President Kamala Harris spent her weekend in California and Las Vegas. On Sunday, she held a fundraiser in Los Angeles. On the menu were “duck egg roll, goat cheese honey blueberry ball, Beef Wellington, lobster roll (and) crab cakes,” Matt Viser of The Washington Post wrote on X.

Talk about a “let them eat cake” moment.

On Sunday night, Harris put up a post on X saying she had been briefed by FEMA. It included a photo of Harris on Air Force Two. She looks very solemn in the photo as she holds a pen over what looks like a blank piece of paper. She also has a cellphone in front of her and a wired earbud in her ear. But it doesn’t look like her earbuds are plugged into her phone.

The parallels to 2005 are striking. The propaganda press savaged President George Bush for not responding sooner to Hurricane Katrina. A photo of Bush looking out over the devastation from an airplane window became a sign of his supposed aloofness.

Ten years later, U.S. News and World Report wrote a retrospective on the hurricane, calling it Bush’s “undoing.” It said, “Hurricane Katrina badly damaged the former president’s reputation. And it still hasn’t recovered.”

The indifference in the response of both Biden and Harris has been much worse. Yet, the propaganda press didn’t even make it a 10-hour story. Instead, Politico used a “Republicans pounce” framing when Donald Trump said he would visit a hurricane-hit area in Georgia. It wrote, “Trump brings Hurricane Helene into 2024 campaign.”

As Appalachia flooded, Biden and Harris couldn’t be bothered to adjust their plans. If only those towns had been serving crab cakes.

Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Opinion section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on X.