Donald Trump arrived in Houston on Saturday to meet victims of Hurricane Harvey, on a trip aimed at bringing comfort and hope, while avoiding the mistakes of George W Bush.

The president and the first lady, Melania Trump, met families at a storm shelter in a Houston sports stadium accompanied by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and the city’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, and then visited a church in the suburb of Pearland.

Trump told volunteers and storm victims that Texas would beat expectations in the speed of its recovery.

“The water’s disappearing. We knew we have a long way to go, but the water’s disappearing,” he said. “It’s a long term. We’re talking about, they say two years, three years, but I think that because this is Texas you’ll probably do it in six months!”

The people at the church burst into loud cheers on a visit that was mostly warmly received, although a few protesters held up anti-Trump signs along his route.

“The message is that things are working out well,” the president told reporters. “Really, I think people appreciate what’s been done. It’s been done very efficiently, very well, and that’s what we want. We’re very happy with the way everything is going.”

Trump had been criticised for not meeting flood victims on his first trip to the disaster zone and seemed determined to put that right. The president and his wife donned plastic gloves to serve lunch to families at the shelter, and he was pictured sitting with children at tables piled high with donated games.

Trump helps volunteers hand out meals during a visit with flood survivors at a relief center in Houston. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

“They were just happy. We saw a lot of happiness,” said Trump, whose ebullience over the recovery effort at times overshadowed recognition of the scale of the devastation wrought by Harvey on the Gulf coast.

“It’s been really nice. It’s been a wonderful thing. As tough as this was, it’s been a wonderful thing, I think, even for the country to watch it and for the world to watch. It’s been beautiful,” he said in a shelter full of families who had lost their homes and possessions to the floods. “Have a good time, everybody!” the president shouted to a group of reporters.

Leaving Houston, Trump took an opportunity to denigrate the press while congratulating the Coast Guard.

“I hear the Coast Guard saved ... almost 11,000 people by going into winds the media would not go into. Unless it’s a really good story,” the president said as the Trumps boarded Air Force One on the way to Lake Charles, Louisiana. His remarks came after days of reports of journalists putting down cameras to rescue people trapped in their homes by the floodwaters.

The president is having to navigate not just receding flood waters but perilous political currents similar to those which damaged Bush in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.



Trump set the stage on Friday by signalling a request to Congress for a $14.5bn downpayment for storm victims and a declaration making Sunday a national day of prayer.

He has also offered to donate $1m of his own money, but it has not yet been handed over. On Air Force One flying to Houston, his spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders canvassed journalists for suggestions of charities to donate to.

Flanked in the Oval Office on Friday by leaders from the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, the president invited all Americans “to join us as we continue to pray for those who have lost family members or friends, and for those who are suffering in this time of crisis”.

The sombre tone contrasted with campaign-style rhetoric about crowd size during his visit to Texas earlier in the week, as well as tweets marvelling at the storm’s power, which had prompted accusations that Trump was temperamentally unfit for the role of consoler-in-chief.

In addition to projecting empathy on Saturday, Trump must manage a tangle of hurricane-related consequences which complicate his fiscal, immigration and border security policies.

The scale of the disaster loomed clearer on Friday as rescuers worked their way through the 300-mile swath of south-east Texas drenched by Harvey. Some communities remained submerged; others lacked water and power. Texas officials estimate more than 185,000 homes were damaged and 9,000 destroyed. The Red Cross said 42,000 people were in shelters. At least 45 people have died.

A category 4 hurricane when it made landfall last week, Harvey still packed a wallop as a tropical depression as it moved north-east, triggering flood warnings in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Trump has given an uneven response to the first national disaster of his presidency.

Last week, he swiftly granted the Texas governor’s request for a disaster declaration, releasing federal funds, and he has remained in close contact with state officials.

Brock Long, his pick to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), has proved capable, according to analysts.

The $14.5bn request to Congress – $7.8bn to be released in the coming days, the rest at the end of the month – will cheer state officials who hope to eventually gain $120bn in federal help.

But as the storm barrelled in last week, Trump struck discordant notes.

“Wow – Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood!” he tweeted, sounding more awed than horrified. “125 MPH winds!”

He pardoned Joe Arpaio, a controversial former sheriff, in the early hours of the storm. Asked about timing, Trump said television ratings would be higher than normal.

The former Celebrity Apprentice host also noted that Long, the Fema chief, had “become very famous on television over the last couple of days”.

And on a visit to Corpus Cristi and Austin on Tuesday, he seemed more excited than sympathetic, telling a rally: “What a crowd, what a turnout.”

Critics complained that his subsequent tweet – “After witnessing first hand the horror & devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, my heart goes out even more so to the great people of Texas!” – was false because he did not personally witness storm damage nor meet any victims.

Houston, which bore the brunt of Harvey’s wrath, will give the president ample opportunity to do both. He is also expected to meet the mayor, Sylvester Turner, a Democrat who has vowed to personally defend undocumented immigrants from any Trump-inspired crackdown.

The storm has complicated Trump’s agenda in Washington.

Massive federal aid for Texas and Louisiana will undermine efforts by the White House and congressional Republicans to curb the deficit.

But administration officials have refused to back away from the president’s threat to stake government operations on funding for what was arguably his most signature campaign promise.

“The president’s very much committed to building the wall,” Sanders told reporters Friday when asked if Trump was willing to withdraw the threat of a government shutdown over the project.

The president faces an additional dilemma over whether to accept an offer of aid from Mexico, his favourite punching bag. Abbott said he would accept.

Harvey also put Trump’s denial of climate change under fresh scrutiny. Experts said global warming aggravated the storm.

Trump’s overriding political challenge in Houston and Louisiana, however, will be to not resemble Bush in the wake of Katrina. Bush appeared slow to respond, detached from the suffering and deluded in his confidence in Michael Brown, the hapless head of Fema in 2005. “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” said Bush, misplaced praise which haunted the rest of his presidency.

On the eve of Harvey making landfall, the Republican senator Chuck Grassley tweeted a warning to Trump to not repeat Bush’s errors. The president tweeted back: “Got your message loud and clear. We have fantastic people on the ground, got there long before #Harvey. So far, so good!”