Byrne: While Louisiana suffers, Obama’s golfing with his buddies and the media’s silent

BATON ROUGLE, La. — In what the Red Cross has called “the worst natural disaster to strike the United States since Superstorm Sandy,” Louisiana has endured catastrophic flooding from 6,900,000,000,000 gallons of rain in a single week.

President Barack Obama has directed FEMA Director Craig Fugate to “utilize all resources available to assist in the response and recovery,” but has been conspicuously absent himself, choosing instead to remain on vacation on Martha’s Vineyard as the state’s residents suffered.

“On the Gulf Coast, we have seen friends and neighbors reaching out to help our neighbors in Louisiana,” noted Alabama congressman Bradley Byrne (R-AL1), whose coastal district has made him close friends and allies with Louisiana’s congressional delegation. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem President Obama shares that same empathy. While the people of Louisiana continue to suffer, the President was playing golf with his liberal buddies in Martha’s Vineyard.”

Then-President George W. Bush endured fierce criticism from the national media in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Texas when the storm hit, but flew back to Washington, D.C. two days later before visiting Louisiana later in the week. The fiercest critics blasted him for initially flying over the devastation and viewing it from the sky, rather than from the ground.

Perhaps most famously, rapper Kanye West declared during a Red Cross television special, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Even as Bush transitioned out of the White House, articles continued to be written about Katrina being “the beginning of the end” of his presidency.

This week, however, there has been noticeably less outrage from the national media as President Obama chose to stay on vacation even longer than President Bush.

“Where is the national media outrage that we saw during Hurricane Katrina?” Congressman Byrne asked.

A local Louisiana newspaper has been among the few critics of the Obama administration’s response to the flooding.

“We’ve seen this story before in Louisiana, and we don’t deserve a sequel,” wrote the editorial board of The Advocate. “In 2005, a fly-over by a vacationing President George W. Bush became a symbol of official neglect for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The current president was among those making political hay out of Bush’s aloofness… If the president can interrupt his vacation for a swanky fundraiser for fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, as he did on Monday, then surely he can make time to show up for a catastrophe that’s displaced thousands.”

Republican Presidential nominee Donald J. Trump will be visiting Louisiana on Friday with his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.