Barack Obama's trip to campaign for Hillary Clinton in Florida is postponed due to Hurricane Matthew. | Getty Obama's plans to stump for Clinton get interrupted — again

Once again, President Barack Obama has had to cancel his plans to campaign for Hillary Clinton and tout his signature health law.

Obama was supposed to discuss Obamacare in Tampa and hold a rally for Clinton in Miami on Wednesday, but they’ve been pre-empted by the weather, White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on Tuesday.


“Due to the expected, or at least the potential impact of Hurricane Matthew here in the United States, President Obama has decided to postpone his travel to Florida that was scheduled for tomorrow,” Earnest said. Instead, Earnest added, the president will visit the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington for an update on storm response as the hurricane churns toward the East Coast.

Obama has had to scotch plans for these types of events already in recent months, twice in response to an act of violence.

The just-canceled Tampa event, meant to look back on Obamacare’s accomplishments and consider possible next steps to improve it, had originally been scheduled for July 14. But on July 7, five police officers in Dallas were shot and killed in an ambush — an attack that appeared to have been motivated by police killings of two black men in separate incidents across the country. Obama’s only travel that week ended up being to Texas, for a memorial service.

The Dallas shooting also prompted Vice President Joe Biden to cancel his first planned joint appearance with Clinton, slated for July 8, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The event was pushed back by more than a month.

Obama and Clinton also called off their first joint appearance scheduled for June 15 at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, after 49 people were gunned down at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando — the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. By the time they made a new plan to campaign together, the electoral map had shifted, and Wisconsin seemed to be more firmly blue. Instead, they appeared North Carolina together on July 5.

Of the Florida events, Earnest said, “We are hoping to be able to reschedule those events relatively soon, but that will be determined by the impact of the storm and other elements of the president’s schedule.”

