Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Trump praises rapid response of agencies to Irma disaster
US President Donald Trump met with federal and state leaders in Florida yesterday as he surveyed damage from Hurricane Irma and praised the rapid response of the recovery effort.
Speaking at an airport hangar where he was joined by wife Melania, Vice President Mike Pence, Governor Rick Scott, he said: “We have been very, very fast and we had to be.”
Mr Trump’s visit to Fort Myers and
Naples along Florida’s battered southwestern coast offered him the chance to see how people were coping and how the Federal Emergency Management Agency was responding.
The President monitored Irma over this past weekend from Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.
Nearly half of Florida was engulfed by Irma, which left flooded streets, damaged homes and displaced residents in its wake.
Many communities are still cleaning
up or without power. Widespread outages led to long lines outside of the relatively few stores, petrol stations and restaurants that had reopened.
Mr Trump quickly injected politics into the visit, telling reporters he was hopeful Mr Scott will challenge Democrat Bill Nelson next year.
He said: “I don’t know what he’s going to do.
“But I know at a certain point it ends for you and we can’t let it end. So I hope he runs for the Senate.”