Mouth...

Trump’s mouth battles the storm

By HENRY C. JACKSON

When it rains, it seems to pour — right out of President Donald Trump’s mouth.

As Harvey’s downpours flooded and battered, Trump has not stood silent. Quite the opposite. He’s projected that he is in charge. He’s talked at length about the storm’s strength. He’s hyped the government’s response and coordination efforts. He’s even made note of the rising media profile of the FEMA administrator. And he’s tweeted and tweeted — tweeting or retweeting nearly 40 times since Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane.

The torrent of talk has ensured that Americans are aware their president is engaged. As is often the case, though, Trump’s engagement doesn’t always hew to his talking points.

Here are eight times the president has struck off-key notes during the disaster:

1. Crowd count: As Trump disembarked Air Force One in Texas on Tuesday to observe storm damage, his first response was to notice how many people were greeting him. “What a crowd, what a turnout,” he said, before reassuring those assembled about recovery efforts.

2. No problem, Laura: President Trump appeared to respond directly to Fox News and its sometime host Laura Ingraham when he tweeted at them Tuesday after a segment on unfilled FEMA positions. “We are not looking to fill all of those positions,” Trump tweeted. “Don’t need many of them — reduce size of government.”

3. Off message: As the storm ravaged Texas, the president didn’t avoid politics on his Twitter account: He ripped Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.); retweeted conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza blaming liberal groups for recent violence; and retweeted another tweet, unrelated to the storm, that took aim at former President Barack Obama. He also endorsed a book by Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, a controversial figure who recently withdrew from consideration for a post at the Department of Homeland Security.

4. Simply amazed: Throughout Harvey, Trump has tweeted about the storm’s size — often sounding like anyone else watching on TV. One sample: “Wow — Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood!"

5. Texas-sized: Trump paid tribute to the state of Texas’ wherewithal as he commented on the storm on Tuesday. Harvey is “historic, it’s epic, but I tell you it happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything.”

6. Ratings booster: Asked about his pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona — something Trump announced on Friday as Hurricane Harvey was about to make landfall — the president said he’d done it to maximize notice of his move. “Well, a lot of people think it was the right thing to do,” Trump said at a Monday news conference. “And actually, in the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they would be normally.”

7. Star turn: Trump went to pains not to have a “Brownie” moment by lavishing praise on his FEMA administrator as the disaster unfolded — as President George W. Bush did during Hurricane Katrina. But Trump couldn’t help make this observation about FEMA Administrator Brock Long: He “really has become very famous on television over the last couple of days.”

8. ‘Innocent’ Harvey: While accurately describing the historic nature of Harvey, Trump added his own aside about the storm’s name: “There’s never been anything so historic in terms of damage and in terms of ferocity, is what we’ve witnessed with Harvey,” Trump said. “Sounds like such an innocent name, right? But it’s not innocent. It’s not innocent.”