CNN heaped praise on Joe Biden’s speech in Maui, where he compared the devastating fires to a small kitchen fire at his home.
The official death toll for the Maui fire is over 100 people, with over 000 still unaccounted for.
The fires destroyed nearly 3,000 structures, state and local officials confirmed.
“President and Dr. Biden spent several hours both over Lahaina on the ground here and meeting with both first responders and victims of this tragedy at the big shelter, the War Memorial shelter in central Maui,” CNN climate reporter Bill Weir said.
Weir said Biden’s Maui speech “said the right things in many cases when he came to the microphone to give his statements,” despite the remarks about the kitchen fire.
He added, he “did serve as empathizer-in-chief after five days of being mostly silent on the issue publicly.”
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Biden, who has faced growing criticism for vacationing and making “no comment” to the tragedy, finally visited the island after two weeks.
Biden also enraged Maui fire victims after he compared a fire at his home to the fires on the island.
“I don’t want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, what it’s like to lose a home,” Biden said.
“Years ago — now 15 years ago — I was in Washington doing ‘Meet the Press.’ It was a sunny Sunday, and lightning struck at home on a little lake that’s outside of our home — not a lake, a big pond — and hit a wire and came up underneath our home into the heating ducts — the air conditioning ducts.”
“To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my ’67 Corvette, and my cat,” he continued. “But all kidding aside, I watched the firefighters, the way they responded.”
“The smoke — and the firefighters here can tell you — sometimes smoke is so thick. From the windows out, it was that thick inside the home. And we were — we were insured. We did not have any problem, but being out of our home for a better part of a year was difficult,” Biden added.
“I can only imagine what it’s like to lose your home completely burned to the ground.”
WATCH: Distraught Maui Fire Victim Pleads with Biden for Support: “Where Is the President?”
