Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has criticized comments President Joe Biden made during his visit to Hawaii, arguing that Biden discussed "not their tragedy, but his."

Following his surveillance of the damage from the Maui wildfires, Biden talked about a fire in 1972 that killed his first wife and daughter. The president also discussed a fire that affected his home, in which he "almost lost my wife, my '67 Corvette, and my cat." Huckabee, a Republican, compared Biden to a Saturday Night Live character named Penelope, who always "had to have some other comment" on how her situation was more significant.

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"It's like Joe Biden is playing the role of Penelope," Huckabee said during an appearance on Fox News's Hannity. "Well, it's funny. It's comedy. But it's not funny when the president of the United States is so tone-deaf to the extraordinary tragedy these people have felt and he talks about himself rather than talk about them."

Huckabee also said that while he was not unsympathetic to the death of Biden's first wife, the president's past tragedies were not what the people of Maui "needed to hear right then."

The fire that Biden discussed during his visit happened in 2004 when "lightning struck on a little lake" outside Biden's home in Delaware, which "hit the wire and came up underneath our home, into the air condition ducts," Biden said.

However, the Cranston Heights Fire Company said the fire was contained within 20 minutes and that it "did not need a widespread incident response throughout the county," according to the New York Post.

During his visit to Maui, Hawaii, Biden promised federal aid to help rebuild Maui. The president's promise comes after the White House announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had authorized critical needs assistance to provide a one-time payment of $700 per household to applicants.

Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii said Monday that Biden and other government leaders need to rebuild the "huge deficit in trust" in the aftermath of the Hawaii wildfires. She also expressed criticism of the $700 payment to Maui residents, describing it as "almost a slap in the face" to the wildfire victims.

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"Anybody who has been to Hawaii knows that $700 does not go very far at a time when so many have lost everything," Gabbard said.

Officials in Maui said on Sunday night that 850 people are still reported missing as the search-and-rescue effort continues in the affected communities. The fire is confirmed to have killed 114 people so far, though this number could go up as search and rescue efforts continue.