Amid ongoing criticism of his responses to recent disasters in states across the country, President Joe Biden, when asked why his trip to storm-ravaged Florida did not include a meeting with Gov. Ron DeSantis, admitted that he simply didn't know the reason, as ABC News reports.

Biden was in the Sunshine State to survey the fallout from Hurricane Idalia, and while there, he did not have any face-to-face engagement with DeSantis, despite earlier assurances that federal and state agencies were working cooperatively to address citizen needs as rapidly as possible.

Biden touches down

As NBC News reported, the president, accompanied by first lady Jill Biden, arrived in Gainesville on Saturday and engaged in an aerial tour of damage caused by the historic hurricane.

From there, they traveled to Live Oak, where they stopped at an elementary school currently in use as a Red Cross-operated shelter.

Biden received a briefing on the current status of recovery efforts and held meetings with local officials, emergency responders, and survivors of the storm.

The president lauded the efforts of Floridians who worked collaboratively to offer help to those in need, saying, “The spirit of this community is remarkable...[t]here's no hope like your neighbor walking across the street to see what they can do for you.”

Giving each other a miss

That cooperative philosophy, however, did not appear sufficient to yield a meeting between Biden and DeSantis, with the chief executive's press secretary having revealed on Friday, “We don't have any plans for the governor to meet with the president tomorrow.”

“In these rural communities, and so soon after impact, the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts,” Jeremy Redfern added.

When asked Saturday for comment on DeSantis' apparent unwillingness to join in his tour of impacted communities, Biden said that he was not disappointed by the governor's absence, did not know for certain why a meeting did not occur, and added, “He may have had other reasons.”

“But he did help us plan this,” Biden acknowledged. “He sat with FEMA and decided where we should go, where would be the least disruption.”

Change in tone

As NBC News noted, before the president's visit, both he and DeSantis went to great lengths to communicate to the public that partisan political rancor would not get in the way of emergency response efforts.

However, DeSantis soon cautioned about the potential disruptions to recovery logistics a presidential visit could introduce.

“There's a time and a place to have political season,” DeSantis warned before Idalia's landfall,” adding, “But then there's a time and a place to say that this is something that's life threatening, this is something that could potentially cost somebody their life, it could cost them their livelihood.”

However, given the blistering criticism Biden received in the aftermath of the devastating Hawaiian wildfires for what was characterized by many as a delayed, tone-deaf, and lackadaisical response, it was highly unlikely that he would be allowed to make the same mistakes by waiting on the sidelines or staying out of sight in the wake of Florida's destructive calamity.