The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Trump offers comfort to battered Carolinas
President distributes meals, walks through damage, offers hugs.
NEW BERN, N.C. — Showing heart in a moment of crisis, President Donald Trump handed out hot dogs, hugs and comforting words in the Carolinas on Wednesday as he surveyed the wreckage left by Hurricane Florence.
With residents still recovering from torrential rains that left widespread destruction and injury, Trump sought to strike a balance between comforter and cheerleader.
During a packed day, he visited both North and South Carolina, distributed meals at a church, walked amid piles of sodden furniture in damaged neighborhoods, offered hugs and handshakes to residents and discussed the response efforts with local and state officials.
“America grieves with you and our hearts break for you. God bless you,” he said during a briefing at a marine base in Havelock, North Carolina. “We will never forget your loss. We will never leave your side. We’re with you all the way.”
Trump also asked about the status of Lake Norman, where he owns a golf club, telling officials, “I can’t tell you why, but I love that area.”
He joked with a family who had a large yacht they didn’t own wash up against their house. “At least you got a nice boat out of the deal,” he told them. “What’s the law? Maybe it becomes theirs.”
The whirlwind tour through the Carolinas showed Trump reaching out to connect with those reeling from the monster storm.
After a briefing on the recovery effort, Trump helped hand out hot dogs and chips at a Baptist church in New Bern, a riverfront city that experienced severe flooding. The president leaned over and checked in with people as they drove through to pick up food.
“How’s the house?” he asked one person. “You take care of yourself,” he said.
Trump also praised the vol-
unteers, at one point hugging a young helper and telling his parents, “You did a good job.”
Trump’s motorcade then drove through a storm-damaged neighborhood where waterlogged sofa cushions, mattresses and downed trees were piled up along streets and boats lay on their sides after washing up along a grassy shore.
“How’s it doing?” the president asked after one woman pointed at a house. He chatted and shook people’s hands as he walked along a street strewn with trash, branches and wet furniture. Some people applauded as he went by.
Trump later traveled to Conway, South Carolina, where more flooding is expected still.
“Is everybody OK?” he asked those gathered, assuring them it was “going to be OK.”
“Lot of money coming from Washington,” he promised.
At Horry County’s emergency operations center, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said the storm had likely been the worst disaster in the state’s history, but warned it wasn’t over yet.
“The rain and the water you see out there now is just the beginning,” he said. “The worst is yet to come.”
Trump, too, warned that more water was on the way, but assured those gathered that both he and Washington are “with you.”
“Now it looks nice, but it’s really the calm before the storm,” he said.
It was the same message at Trump’s first stop in North Carolina, where Gov. Roy Cooper and federal and state officials briefed the president at a Marine Corps air station in Havelock, which sits among areas Florence hit hardest. The governor asked for help “cutting red tape” to get his state the federal assistance it will need to recover.
Cooper said Florence was an “epic” storm and noted that farmers suffered significant losses and scores of people lost their homes. Some 10,000 people remain in shelters.
“We will be there 100 percent,” pledged Trump, wearing a windbreaker and khaki pants. “All of the folks from the federal government that are around the table are confirming it.”
Cooper, a Democrat, said he’d told the president “over and over again” that the state was “going to need significant resources to recover.”
Across the Carolinas, exhaustion and frustration were building as thousands of people waited to go home days after the storm unleashed epic floods that have been blamed for at least 37 deaths.
In Fayetteville,Roberta and Joseph Keithley had been sleeping on cots set up in a school classroom since Friday.
They still didn’t know if their home was ruined.
“It’s getting a little frustrating, but you have to deal with it and roll with the punches,” said Roberta Keithley, 73. “It’s just another hurdle to get over in life.”
To the south, daybreak brought a return of floodwaters to Nichols, South Carolina.
The flooding from Florence had subsided, only to get worse again.
Mayor Lawson Battle said that as far as he knew, everyone in the town of about 360 people evacuated as the water first started to invade town Monday. But Battle just couldn’t think about that anymore.
“I’m focusing on this disaster at hand,” he said. “I don’t have time to think. I’m just so tired.”