President Trump and Melania Trump traveled to Texas on Tuesday as the storm continued to wreak havoc on the state.
WASHINGTON — President Trump left Washington en route to storm-lashed Corpus Christi on Tuesday morning to see for himself the damage caused by Tropical Storm Harvey and demonstrate his personal commitment to the swamped region.
Mr. Trump, who pushed aides to schedule a visit to Texas as early as possible, initially considered touring San Antonio, far to the north of the damage but settled on Corpus Christi because it was 30 miles away from the most severely impacted parts of the Gulf Coast, and suffered relatively light damage from the initial impact of the storm.
After conferring with local, state and federal emergency management officials, the president, accompanied by Melania Trump, the first lady, plans to travel north to Austin, where he will meets with top Texas officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott, a political ally who has given the White House high marks for its storm response thus far.
The visit takes place five days after Harvey made landfall near Rockport, Texas, as a Category 4 hurricane with 130-mile-an-hour winds.
Mr. Trump, his aides say, is eager to avoid the mistakes made by President George W. Bush in 2005, when he took a relatively hands-off approach to the federal response to Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana.
Even though Vice President Mike Pence and federal officials from the Department of Homeland Security have taken the lead on negotiating many of the details of the response, Mr. Trump has taken pains to emphasize his personal involvement in the crisis.
“We are glad he’s coming, ” said Ben Molina, a Corpus Christi councilman. “It’s important that he sees the damage around the coast. I’ ve never seen anything like it, and neither has anybody else.”
The president on Monday pledged to quickly pass an appropriations bill to deal with the massive damage to private property and public infrastructure. He said he would return to region this weekend.
Mr. Trump left Washington on a rainy morning, boarding Air Force One with an entourage of aides that included John F. Kelly, his chief of staff; Marc Short, his legislative affairs director and his point man with elected officials in the region; and specialists from the Small Business Administration, who will assist local businesses with recovery loans.
The storm is the most powerful to hit the United States in more than a decade, dumping as much as four feet of water on low-lying areas on the coast, forcing tens of thousands of residents to seek emergency shelter on higher ground.
