Biden to visit the site of the Baltimore bridge collapse on Friday

President Joe Biden will travel to Baltimore on Friday to visit the site of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced the visit on Monday, noting that Biden will meet with state and local officials on the ground. She said additional details will be released about how the president will survey the damage in the coming days.

The trip comes after Biden said last week that he would visit the disaster site. The president also vowed that the federal government would provide all resources Baltimore needed to rebuild the bridge after a container ship led to its destruction. Six people were presumed dead after the crash.

“The president is going to see for himself what happened,” Jean-Pierre said. “See for himself the response.”

The Baltimore bridge collapse represents a major test of the government’s ability to respond to infrastructure disasters, one that is likely to have a massive impact on port operations and regional shipping for months, if not longer. Last week, the Department of Transportation announced $60 million in funds from the Federal Highway Administration’s emergency fund to help with clean up and repair. But the rebuild is expected to be a lengthy and expensive process that could ultimately require Congress to appropriate funding.

“It is a complicated scenario,” Jean-Pierre said. “We are going to have conversations with congressional members.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has already visited the scene, and Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su was in Baltimore on Monday, Jean-Pierre said. The Department of Labor is coordinating with local and state officials to determine how to assist workers who are out of work due to the closure of the port.

Jean-Pierre also addressed racist attacks against Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, who will be with Biden on Friday.

“They’re wrong, and they’re baseless,” Jean-Pierre said of the insults, which have included calling Scott, who is Black, a “DEI mayor.”

During a press conference on Monday, Moore said he was grateful for Biden’s upcoming visit during which the president will see an “unprecedented level of damage.”

“He’s going to see the fact that we have a ship that is almost the size of the Eiffel Tower that weighs about as much as the Washington Monument that's sitting in the middle of the Patapsco River. He’s gonna see a bridge that has been in existence since I was alive. I don’t know what it looks like without that bridge,” Moore said. “And he’s gonna come he’s gonna see it. Sitting on top of the ship. He’s gonna see the level of complexity.”

Kierra Frazier contributed to this report.