President Joe Biden arrived in Maui this week full of quips and folksy anecdotes to show his support for the victims of the deadly fires, pulling out some of his best material to comfort those who lost everything. “I know just what you guys are going through,” The President told a group of Lahaina residents gathered to hear him speak.
“When I was-I mean-a few years ago-a decade or so I was walking on the beach in Delaware, and if you’ve ever been to that beach you know how hot that sand gets in the sun, let me tell ya. I walked all the way across the beach without sandals on and my feet felt like they were burning hotter than one of Hunter’s little girlfriends in a church on Sunday if you know what I mean! Pause for laughter.”
Lahaina residents reacted to the President’s story with mixed emotions, with some believing the President was just trying to relate to their entire city being burned to ashes and others wondering if he knew where he was.
“Hot beach sand?” Paolo Kekoa asked reporters. “I’m not sure how that’s supposed to make me feel better after my entire house and everything I owned was incinerated…”
Democrat Leslie Makani says she appreciated the President’s remarks. “They just go to show what a man of the people he is, how not at all detached from reality he is, how much he knows where he is at all times. Oh look, he’s bowing his head and closing his eyes in humble reverence for the devastation on our island.”
The President continued to regale islanders with more totally relatable stories like the time he burned a Totino’s pizza in the oven and his house smelled like “burned pepperoni and fake cheese” for over an hour.