Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said that blaming climate change for last week's devastation caused by Hurricane Idalia is "a lie."
More than 280,000 homes and businesses in Florida were without power on Wednesday, according to data from PowerOutage.us, as Idalia slammed into the Big Bend region of Florida.
President Joe Biden has said that climate change has been at fault for natural disasters such as Idalia, which landed in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane.
DeSantis disagreed.
"I think that the notion that somehow hurricanes are something new, that's just false. And we've got to stop politicizing the weather and stop politicizing natural disasters," DeSantis said while speaking in Yankeetown, Florida, on Sunday.
DeSantis then said Florida has seen "very busy" periods with "significant hurricanes" during the past decades.
"I think sometimes people need to take a breath and get a little bit of perspective here," he said. "But the notion that somehow if we just adopt very left-wing policies at the federal level, that somehow we will not have hurricanes, that is a lie.
"And that is people trying to take what's happened with different types of storms and use that as a pretext to advance their agenda on the backs of people that are suffering, and that's wrong, and we're not going to do that in the state of Florida."
DeSantis, who trails former President Donald Trump by a wide margin in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, was asked about Biden's "climate change" comments.
"I think if you look, there was a storm that went on this almost exact track in 1896. And it had 125-mile-an-hour winds just like this one," DeSantis said.
"If you look at the state of Florida, the most powerful storm, hurricane we've ever had is, actually, the anniversary is now — it's the Labor Day hurricane of 1935. It had an 185-mile-an-hour sustained winds."
DeSantis declined to join Biden when the president visited Florida during the weekend. DeSantis suggested that Biden's presence could hinder disaster response efforts.