US President Donald Trump visited on Tuesday the coastal city of Corpus Christi days after Hurricane Harvey ravaged the state of Texas, turning roads into rivers and neighbourhoods into lakes.
Mostly, Trump -- sporting a ‘USA’ baseball cap and clutching a Texas flag with its trademark lone star -- tried to strike a unifying tone and praised the work of state and federal officials in responding to the disaster.
But after surveying the flood situation in Texas, Trump emerged from a fire station in Annaville and seemingly, in a moment of lapse, forgot his sobriety, climbed a ladder and remarked: “What a crowd, what a turn out.”
The president’s remark almost made it seem that he was at one of his campaign rallies, and not reviewing the damage . Many in the crowd of 1000 were chanting ‘USA, USA’, The Guardian reported.
Twitter users were quick to denounce Trump’s remarks, who otherwise said of tropical storm Harvey: “This was of epic proportion. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”
{{/usCountry}}Twitter users were quick to denounce Trump’s remarks, who otherwise said of tropical storm Harvey: “This was of epic proportion. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”
{{/usCountry}}Did some users predict it right?
The President also said he was pleased with the response so far, but it was too soon to take a victory lap. “We won’t say congratulations. We don’t want to do that.... We’ll congratulate each other when it’s all finished,” he said.
Four days after Harvey slammed onshore as a Category Four hurricane, emergency crews in Houston still struggled to reach hundreds of stranded people in a massive round-the-clock rescue operation.
(With input from agencies)