Trump tours Texas; ordinary people, including ‘Mattress Mack’ and his furniture stores, come to the rescue
This is a state that ‘can handle anything,’ he assures crowd
President Trump mounted the front bumper of a firetruck in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Tuesday, waving a Texas flag and telling the gathered crowd, “We love you. You are special. We are here to take care of you.”
Trump came to Texas to survey the damage from Hurricane Harvey and rally communities trying to escape floodwaters. Harvey weakened to a tropical storm on its way to Louisiana. Trump said he might return to Texas and Louisiana over the weekend.
The storm is the most severe natural disaster of Trump’s presidency. More than 1.7 million people were under evacuation orders, and search-and-rescue operations continued.
“It’s historic, its epic, but I will tell you, it happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything,” Trump told hundreds of cheering supporters outside the firehouse after he received a briefing from federal agencies responding to the disaster.
On his way to meet with emergency officials, his motorcade passed trees, signs and fences knocked down by the hurricane’s 130-mph winds.
Later, he flew to Austin, where he toured the state’s emergency operations center and spoke of the “monster known as Harvey.”
“It sounds like such an innocent name,” he said. “But it’s not innocent.”
Spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said aboard Air Force One that Trump avoided the areas most impacted by flooding.
“The president wants to be very cautious about making sure that any activity doesn’t disrupt any of the recovery efforts. ... As of right now, I don’t know that we will be able to get to some of the really damaged areas,” she said.
One of those areas is Houston, where 9,000 people shared 5,000 cots at a makeshift emergency shelter at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
“We are very aware of the issues at the convention center,” Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Brock Long told Trump in Corpus Christi. “But let me be clear, this is not the Superdome.”
The New Orleans Superdome was an enduring symbol of the poor response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Trump’s windbreaker-wearing delegation included first lady Melania Trump, Housing Secretary Ben Carson, Health Secretary Tom Price and Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon.
McMahon said the SBA approved its first disaster-related loan, and Trump promised more help would be on the way from Congress. Rebuilding, Trump said, is “going to be a costly proposition.”
The budget Trump proposed this year would cut some of the programs that have traditionally been used for disaster recovery — notably the Community Development Block Grants.
His message in Texas on Tuesday contained no hints of that fiscal conservatism.
“We want to be looked at in five years and 10 years from now as ‘This is the way to do it,’ ” he said at the Corpus Christi firehouse as dispatch calls came over an address system.
He said it’s too early to declare the relief efforts an unqualified success.
“We won’t say congratulations. We don’t want to do that,” Trump told Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. “We’ll congratulate each other when it’s all finished.”
As Trump was in Texas, Vice President Pence took to the airwaves, continuing a blitz of radio and television interviews with stations in the region.
“We know we’re not out of the woods,” he told KKTX-AM in Corpus Christi. “People within the sound of my voice should know that this is still a dangerous storm.”