President Joe Biden has decided not to embark on a final overseas trip in office, canceling plans to travel to Rome for a personal meeting with Pope Francis this weekend as wildfires continue to rage across Los Angeles.
The White House announced that the trip was off on Wednesday night shortly after the president returned from Los Angeles, where high winds and the resulting fires altered a final California swing during which he’d planned to dedicate two new national monuments in the desert. The fires have killed at least five people in Los Angeles County.
“After returning this evening from Los Angeles, where earlier today he had met with police, fire and emergency personnel fighting the historic fires raging in the area and approved a Major Disaster declaration for California, President Biden made the decision to cancel his upcoming trip to Italy to remain focused on directing the full federal response in the days ahead,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
Biden, who has spoken often about his Catholic faith, for a time deflected questions about his political future by declaring himself a “respecter of fate.” He had decided to devote three days of his penultimate week in office to fly to Rome for a private audience with the pope. It was to be a mostly personal meeting that, according to two aides granted anonymity to discuss the trip, offered him a chance to make peace with the end of his long political career.
But now, after seeing his own reelection bid derailed last summer and facing the imminent reality of ceding power to President-elect Donald Trump, fate is upending Biden’s best laid plans for his final days in office.
As he returned to Washington on Wednesday evening, fires spread across the nation’s second largest city.
Biden, who earlier Wednesday appeared with California Gov. Gavin Newsom at a Santa Monica firehouse, announced he had signed a sweeping federal disaster response order.
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