President Donald Trump told a group of federal leaders and Texas officials on Tuesday during a visit to Corpus Christi that he would hold off on congratulating his administration and the Texas government on its response to Hurricane Harvey for “when it’s all finished.”
Trump made the comments after thanking Gov. Greg Abbott, who had introduced him and the administration officials present. Abbott said Trump and his Cabinet officials had “remained in constant contact with me and my staff, and they all had one thing to say: Texas, what do you need, how can we help?”
“Governor, again, thank you very much,” Trump said. “We won’t say congratulations. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to congratulate. We’ll congratulate each other when it’s all finished.”
Trump said it was an “honor” to be in Texas, which he described as a “very special place and a special state.” The president thanked the state’s senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, for their presence. Trump also praised the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s administrator, Brock Long, who he said had “really become very famous on television over the last couple of days.”
“You have been just outstanding, and I can tell you that my folks are just telling me how great your representatives have been in working together,” Trump said of Long. “It’s a real team.”
Trump said that “we want to do” the response to Harvey, which has battered southeastern Texas and delivered historic flooding and rainfall, “better than ever before.”
“We want to be looked at in five years, in 10 years from now, as this is the way to do it,” Trump said. “This was of epic proportion. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this, and I just want to say that working with the governor and his entire team has been an honor for us.”
Trump then told a crowd outside of the fire station, where the meeting with government leaders took place, “We love you” and “You are special — we are here to take care of you.”
“What a crowd, what a turnout,” Trump said, later adding that the storm was “historic, it’s epic, but I can tell you it happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything.”
The storm, which made landfall on Friday as a Category 4 hurricane but has been downgraded to a tropical storm, has pummeled the Houston metro area. Officials have predicted that in some areas rainfall could reach 50 inches by the time the storm is over.
As reported by Business Insider