Harvey batters Texas and Orangutan...

Trump seeks to project toughness, focus as Harvey batters Texas

Trump, relatively new to such crises, faces a major test with his hurricane response.

By JOSH DAWSEY

President Donald Trump sought to project tough competence in the face of the biggest natural disaster of his presidency, describing the hurricane battering Texas over the weekend as an epic storm on social media and announcing he will visit the state on Tuesday.

The White House released photos Sunday showing Trump, with a trademark tough-guy look and a white USA hat, at a conference table at the Camp David retreat leading a teleconference of his senior staff on how to handle Hurricane Harvey, which the National Weather Service has described as "unprecedented."

The agency said rainfall deluging the southeast part of the state could reach 50 inches in some places, and television footage and photos showed much of the Galveston-Corpus Christi-Houston region of Texas beset by extensive flooding well after the storm made landfall Friday night.

Trump’s friends say he has a short attention span — he also tweeted about an upcoming trip to Missouri and his proposed border wall Sunday — but he sought to present himself as focused on Texas, posting online about the hurricane repeatedly. "Even experts have said they've never seen one like this!" he tweeted at one point. "Major rescue operations underway!" he wrote later Sunday.

Trump's office gave no details on his trip set for Tuesday; press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the White House was “coordinating logistics with state and local officials.” The president had at times expressed a desire to visit even sooner, and he told advisers he was determined not to bungle the federal response to the storm, mentioning President George W. Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, according to one person who spoke to Trump.

He was planning other hurricane-related events on Monday in Washington, one adviser said. Meanwhile, although Trump didn’t speak to reporters Sunday, his Federal Emergency Management Agency director made television appearances, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, thanked Trump effusively for the federal government's role in the hurricane response efforts so far.

"He enjoys playing the role even if he's never handled anything like this," one close adviser said of Trump. "He knows what a president is supposed to look like during something like this."

Trump, relatively new to such crises and with key government roles still unfilled, faces a major test with his hurricane response, as his legislative agenda stalls, the Russia investigation appears to heat up and Republicans seem increasingly willing to desert him. The storm’s effects continue as flooding spreads, and the critical assessments of government hurricane response often come days after landfall.

He held a Cabinet meeting Sunday with Vice President Mike Pence to discuss the gravity of the situation. "President Trump continued to stress his expectation that all departments and agencies stay fully committed to supporting the Governors of Texas and Louisiana and his No. 1 priority of saving lives," the White House said.

Abbott, who leads a state where Trump is popular, deployed the National Guard in Texas and praised the federal response to the crisis.

“I've got to tell you, I give FEMA a grade of A+, all the way from the president down. I've spoken to the president several times, to his Cabinet members, such as secretary of homeland security, such as the administrator of FEMA, such as Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services,” Abbott told Fox anchor Chris Wallace on Sunday. “All across the board, from the White House to the federal administration to FEMA, they've been very helpful.”

That was despite Trump’s sometimes divided attention. He used the cover of Friday’s storm to announce a pardon of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the departure of White House national security aide Sebastian Gorka and implementation orders for the president’s decree that transgender individuals will no longer be allowed to serve in the U.S. military.

And on Sunday, he tweeted previews of his upcoming trip to Missouri, which he said he “won by a lot in ’16,” and called again for a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, after he threatened last week to shut down the government if he doesn’t get the funding.

Much of the attention in Texas appeared focused on the storm response, but Trump’s distractions didn’t sit well with some there. John P. Lopez, a sports radio host in the Houston area, tweeted his displeasure after Trump on Sunday morning wrote a post recommending a book by one of his campaign-trail supporters.

“My city is underwater. People losing everything. Unrelenting storm. Medical/1st responders on NO sleep. Thanks for book recommendation, tho,” Lopez wrote on Twitter.