Texas Gov., Lt. Gov. Hit Back at Biden’s ‘Lies’ About Being Unable to Contact Them for Hurricane Beryl Resources

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) have accused President Joe Biden of lying after he claimed he was unsuccessful in reaching state officials to secure disaster resources for Hurricane Beryl.

While more than 1.2 million Texans remain without electricity following Hurricane Beryl’s Monday touchdown, according to PowerOutage.us, Biden told the Houston Chronicle that the federal government could not distribute emergency relief supplies until the White House was able to “track down” state leaders.

“I’ve been trying to track down the governor to see — I don’t have any authority to do that without a specific request from the governor,” Biden said of Abbott, who is currently on an “economic development mission to Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan,” according to his office.

Adding that he “kept tracking the lieutenant governor,” Biden said he was unable to connect with Patrick until Tuesday afternoon to approve the resource distribution.

“​​The president did not provide more details on his attempts to connect with Abbott or Patrick,” the outlet noted.

The Chronicle, which endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign, originally published the article without comments from the state leaders in question, the Blaze reported.

The initial piece also contained a line claiming that a White House spokesperson “said officials tried to reach Abbott and Patrick multiple times,” apparently without success.

That line has since been removed, according to the Blaze.

Patrick shot back at Biden’s claims in a Tuesday X post, saying that the president “falsely” accused him of being unreachable:

“I am disappointed that President Biden is turning Hurricane Beryl into a political issue. We had a cordial call today that ended up with him granting my request for a major disaster declaration. But that’s not good enough for him,” Patrick wrote. “He is falsely accusing me that I was not reachable.”

“He obviously did not know his own employees from FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] were side-by-side with me for 3 days! All he had to do was call them and have them hand their phone to me. I even took a photo with them!”

Patrick added that state officials needed to “determine what our outstanding needs were” before speaking with Biden.

“We were working on that with local officials as we traveled the impacted areas,” he explained. “As I was being briefed today, the president called… To quote President Biden, this is a load of malarkey, and he’s shoveling it!”

In a follow-up post titled “Biden’s Hurricane Hoax,” the lieutenant governor detailed how he gave proof of the call to the Houston Chronicle even though the president called the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) despite having his personal phone number:

“Last night, the @HoustonChron reporter, who wrote the story with Biden’s lie, that he couldn’t find me or Gov. Abbott, asked for the state call log of my conversation with the president. We sent them the log,” Patrick wrote.

The log showed a three-minute call from Biden to TDEM Chief Nim Kidd, whom Patrick said he was sitting next to while awaiting Biden’s call.

“I spoke to the president from 11:49 a.m. to 11:52 a.m. on Chief Kidd’s phone,” Patrick wrote, saying the reason why Biden called Kidd “was puzzling to me since they had just been given my cell phone number.”

According to the lieutenant governor, FEMA officials had called a TDEM employee “roughly 10 minutes” before Biden’s call to ask for his “personal phone number.”

“My team gave FEMA my cell number and my chief of staff’s phone number. Yet, the president still called Chief Kidd’s phone 10 minutes later instead of calling of me,” Patrick said.

He went on to write that “if [Biden] wanted to find me, I was easily found,” and that “Gov. Abbott did not hear from the president during Hurricane Beryl either”:

I spent all weekend working alongside FEMA employees at the State Operations Center in Austin. They are good men and women, but they never said the president was trying to reach me.

The president could have simply called his own FEMA employees who were working with me for 3 days before, during, and after the hurricane. If they wanted to find me, I was easily found. I was where I was supposed to be, at the state operations center, day and night, in plain sight.

Gov. Abbott did not hear from the president during Hurricane Beryl either. Gov. Abbott tweeted that the president has his phone number and called him as recently as Memorial Day. But, he did not call Abbott either during the hurricane.

To suggest that the president could not find me or the governor is ridiculous. The bottom line is this: I asked for a federal disaster declaration at the proper time without delay and the president agreed. Sadly, President Biden is attacking Gov. Abbott and me, trying to score political points, for reasons that make no sense. Mr. President, as you like to say, “C’mon, man!”

While still on his trip in East Asia, Abbott also roasted the president’s claims on social media:

​​”Biden’s memory fails again. Not once did he call me during Beryl,” the governor wrote on X.

“He has my number & called me on Memorial Day after tornadoes hit Texas. I’ve had daily calls with state & local officials during Beryl. I spoke with FEMA Admin while on our trade mission but Biden never called,” Abbott added.

Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary, also put out a response against Biden’s “complete lie.”

“This is a complete lie from Biden, and frankly doesn’t make any sense,” he wrote. “Biden and his Administration know exactly how to get in contact with the Governor and have on numerous occasions in the past, most recently on Friday when FEMA called and spoke with him.”

Going on to call out the Houston Chronicle, Mahaleris said, “A lie travels halfway across the world before the truth puts it’s boots on. @HoustonChron ran a false exclusive story on this nonsense, based off what an incoherent President said, before we had a chance to refute it.”

“This is why Americans have lost faith in media,” the Abbott rep added.