President Biden on Thursday warned those in the path of Hurricane Milton to “evacuate now, now, now,” as he canceled a diplomatic trip abroad so he could oversee his administration’s response to the storm barreling toward Florida’s west coast.
Speaking from the Roosevelt Room in the White House, the president said he had given Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, his personal phone number and he urged Floridians to listen to state authorities.
“I directed this team to do everything you can to save lives and our communities, help our community before, during and after these extreme weather events,” Mr. Biden told reporters after being briefed by disaster response officials. “And that’s being done.”
Evacuations, the president said, are “a matter of life and death.”
Mr. Biden said that Mr. DeSantis had “gotten all that he needs” from the federal government and that the two men had spoken on Monday evening.
“I said, ‘No, you’re doing a great job. It’s being all being done well, thank you for it,’ and I really gave him my personal phone number to call,” Mr. Biden said, describing the conversation.
Mr. Biden said the government had already “surged thousands” of emergency personnel across the Southeast as part of the response to Hurricane Helene. He said he had told officials that his priority was to increase the size and presence of those personnel.
With the storm poised to slam into the Tampa Bay area by Thursday morning, Mr. Biden decided to postpone a trip to Germany and Angola meant to shore up support for Ukraine and promote investment in Africa.
Mr. Biden’s absence during a major natural disaster most likely would have prompted intense political backlash against the White House — and in effect the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris — for being overseas during a domestic crisis.
His decision to delay his trip overseas is a blow to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Europe has increasingly feared a drop in U.S. support for Ukraine should former President Donald J. Trump win the election. When Mr. Zelensky tried to lobby support for Ukraine in Washington last month, he was met with a far more muted response in Congress than during his previous visits.
Mr. Biden’s visit was an opportunity — maybe one of his last on the global stage as president — to convince the public of the importance of supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
The president has promised to visit an African nation during his term, but he delayed those plans last year, and now his trip to Angola is up in the air. The administration sees Angola as a primary example of its efforts to revitalize relations with African nations after falling behind Russia and China in security and economic influence.
The United States has helped rally $3 billion of public and private sector investments into the clean energy and agriculture sectors of Angola, as well as a rail corridor that carries critical minerals, including cobalt and copper, from central Africa to the Atlantic port of Lobito in Angola. The project, known as the Lobito Corridor, has also helped further Mr. Biden’s goal of diversifying supply chains.
The White House has not yet finalized new dates for the overseas trip.
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