Trump surveys Hurricane Laura injury in post-convention journey
LAKE CHARLES, La. — President Donald Trump bought a firsthand look Saturday on the injury after Hurricane Laura on a post-Republican Nationwide Conference journey that allowed him to make use of the trimmings of his workplace to attempt to undertaking empathy and management.
His stops, first in Louisiana and later in Texas, got here two days after the Class four storm slammed the Gulf Coast, leaving a minimum of 16 useless and wreaking havoc with extreme winds and flooding. Whereas the storm surge has receded and the cleanup effort has begun, a whole lot of 1000’s stay with out energy or water, and so they may for weeks or months as the new summer season stretches on.
“I am right here to assist the good individuals of Louisiana. It’s been a fantastic state for me,” he mentioned in hard-hit Lake Charles. “It was a tremendously highly effective storm.” He mentioned he is aware of one factor concerning the state: “They rebuild it quick.”
In the course of the barely greater than two hours he spent within the metropolis, Trump met with officers and aid employees however not with any of the residents whose properties had been ripped aside within the storm.
He did, nonetheless, get an excellent have a look at the intensive injury and the particles strewn throughout town of 80,000 individuals, starting with the chook’s eye view from Air Pressure One because it got here in for touchdown.
His first cease was a warehouse getting used as a staging space for the Cajun Navy, a bunch of Louisiana volunteers who assist with search and rescue after hurricanes and floods. “Good job,” Trump informed them.
Trump then toured a neighborhood with Gov. John Bel Edwards and performing Homeland Safety Secretary Chad Wolf, making his means down a road blocked by felled timber and the place homes have been battered by the storm, one with its complete roof torn off.
Edwards has mentioned Laura was essentially the most highly effective hurricane ever to strike his state, surpassing even Hurricane Katrina, which was a Class three when it hit nearly precisely 15 years in the past.
“Whether or not you come from Louisiana or fifth Avenue In New York, you recognize about Katrina,” Trump mentioned.
The president then flew by helicopter to Orange, Texas, which was the worst-hit space within the state. A number of hundred supporters greeted his arrival with Trump 2020 flags, banners and indicators. Among the many officers available have been Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Earlier than a tour by air over broken areas, Trump and different officers visited the emergency operations heart in Orange County to debate storm injury and the federal government response.
Trump has typically struggled together with his position as consoler in chief, failing to undertaking empathy when visiting locations laborious hit by tragedy and catastrophe. That features in Puerto Rico, the place Trump was photographed tossing rolls of paper towel into the group, which some noticed as inappropriately playful, given the circumstances. Throughout a visit to the Carolinas in 2018, Trump marveled at a yacht floodwaters had washed onto a household’s property, telling them, “No less than you bought a pleasant boat out of the deal.” And he was caught on digicam telling an individual he’d handed out meals to “have an excellent time.”
Different instances, Trump has been a supply of consolation. After a twister ripped via Alabama final 12 months, killing practically two dozen individuals, Trump hung out with households who’d misplaced family members, listening to their tales and hugging them.
Exhibiting empathy has come extra naturally for his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, who issued an announcement Saturday saying he and his spouse have been praying for these harm by the storm and promising that “we will likely be there that can assist you construct again higher.”
In a potential refined dig on the incumbent, Biden praised the response of households within the hurricane-hit states and thanked them for “reminding Individuals that no catastrophe, no single particular person, no injustice can match the common-or-garden, private, brave ways in which Individuals select decency each single day.”
Laura, which packed 150-mph winds and a storm surge as excessive as 15 toes, toppled timber and broken buildings as far north as central Arkansas. Greater than 580,000 coastal residents evacuated within the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Greater than half of those that died succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning from the unsafe operation of mills. The hurricane additionally killed practically two dozen individuals in Haiti and the Dominican Republic because it barreled towards the U.S.
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