President Joe Biden was caught boasting that “no one f—s with a Biden” on a still-hot mic following a joint press conference with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday.
Biden was speaking to Fort Myers Beach Mayor Ray Murphy, who responded, “Yeah, you got that right.” It’s not clear who Biden was referring to, and his next statement, “And you can’t argue with your brothers outside the house,” didn’t really narrow it down.
He could be referring to the Republican governor, who is thought to be readying a presidential run for 2024 and opposes Biden on almost every issue. Or Senator Marco Rubio, who was also at the press conference. Or Russia’s President Putin, with that matter.
Despite their differences, the political rivals shook hands and praised each other’s efforts in dealing with the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian last week.
“I think he’s done a good job,” said Biden of DeSantis. “We have very different political philosophies, but we worked hand in glove … in dealing with this crisis, we’ve been in complete lockstep.” He added, “Today we have one job and only one job, and that’s to make sure that people in Florida get everything that they need to fully, thoroughly recover.”
DeSantis, for his part, gave Biden a warm introduction at the press conference: “Mr. President welcome to Florida, we appreciate working together across various levels of government.” He also said that the White House had provided federal resources “from the very beginning” of Ian’s approach.
Greg Price, a senior analyst at X Strategies LLC, shared the clip to Twitter.
Murphy, for his part, had remarked how thankful he was that Biden was visiting the region to survey the damage.
There had been some discussion on social media about the manner in which the two, who could conceivably face each other in the 2024 presidential race, would greet one another. Although there was theorizing about a fist bump or simply a pleasant hello, they ended up firmly shaking hands as they set aside their differences to work toward a common goal.
Biden did not refer to the hot mic moment in a later tweet in which he said, “We have one job: getting the people of Florida what they need as fast as we can.”
