Awkward moment, the disheveled-looking Biden shuffles away from the lectern as the Hawaiian Democrat tries to speak to him, minutes after giving a deaf speech to the victims of Maui’s deadly wildfires

President Joe Biden compounded his disastrous trip to Hawaii in the wake of devastating wildfires with another gaffe, blatantly ignoring a Democratic senator before shuffling off at the end of an uninspiring speech yesterday.

The 80-year-old had a particularly awkward moment with Brian Schatz, Hawaii’s Democratic senator, when Schatz offered him a sip of water at the end of a press conference.

Biden completely ignored the senator and turned his back on him. Then he began to shuffle away, gazing listlessly into the crowd, mouth open, as his wife Jill and Hawaii Governor Josh Green led him away from the lectern.

Enraged Hawaiians had already greeted the president with fury, shouting “f*** you” to his motorcade and waving signs telling him to go home, as the 80-year-old and his wife died thirteen days after the outbreak of the inferno toured the island of Maui. out.

The awkward scene came shortly after Biden gave a meandering, tone-deaf speech in which he compared the wildfires — which killed at least 114 people and left 850 people missing — to his experience of a minor kitchen fire.

The president and his wife were not greeted warmly by residents of Hawaii yesterday.

As their motorcade moved through Maui, several people lined the streets, waving Trump 2024 flags and shouting obscenities at the passing cars.

One person waved a sign that contrasted the money spent on Ukraine with the aid sent to Hawaii. He calculated that since the outbreak of war in February 2022, every Ukrainian has received more than $1,700.

Meanwhile, the White House announced that each affected household in Hawaii will receive $700 — an amount many islanders considered offensive.

Locals’ anger mounted on Sunday when Biden, who was asked about the fires while relaxing on a Delaware beach, simply replied, “No comment.”

And last week he seemed to forget the name Maui, repeatedly referring to fires blazing on “the Big Island.”

Biden interrupted his Lake Tahoe vacation on Monday to fly five hours to the island, insisting that the federal government was there for the islanders, despite announcing the paltry amount of compensation for each household.

Demanding to know why federal aid was slow and so meager in arriving, even the Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in questioning Biden’s delay in arriving in Maui.

The death toll in Maui has passed 114, with some 850 people still missing.

But Biden waited 13 days since the fires broke out before he could visit the island.

“The devastation is overwhelming, 114 deaths to date,” Biden acknowledged in comments yesterday, before opening a lengthy anecdote about his own loss of his first wife Naomi and year-old daughter in a 1972 car accident.

Against a backdrop of charred vehicles and debris, Biden told a crowd, “We’re focused on what’s next, like rebuilding a long-term rebuild and doing this together to get us back on our feet to get the road to rebuild. we want to rebuild.

“By making sure your voice is heard, by respecting your traditions, by understanding the deep history and meaning the sacred ground, and by raising your community not to change its character, but to restore it.

“We’re also going to bring in the capabilities to help you rebuild. This way your critical infrastructure will be more resilient in the future.’

He also praised “stories of hope and heroism from the aloha spirit.”

Biden had landed in Kahalui hours earlier and visited people who had lost their homes and loved ones in the disaster.

The death toll of 114 people already makes the inferno one of the deadliest in the country’s history – and an estimated 1,000 people are still missing.

Officials are still analyzing the factors that contributed to the massive inferno, including problems with the power grid.