Trump says 'heart goes out' to Texans after not meeting Harvey victims

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that his “heart goes out even more so” to the victims of hurricane-ravaged Texas after touring the state, despite not meeting on Tuesday with any victims or addressing them during his multiple public appearances.

“After witnessing first hand the horror & devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey,my heart goes out even more so to the great people of Texas!” the president tweeted Wednesday morning.


Trump didn’t directly see much horror or devastation on Tuesday. Avoiding the areas hardest hit as relief efforts were underway — at least in part to avoid distracting from those efforts — the president flew to Corpus Christi, where he was briefed on the response to Harvey, and then Austin, where he toured an emergency operations center and received another briefing before flying back to Washington, D.C.

At the top of a speech on tax reform later Wednesday in Springfield, Missouri, Trump followed up on his tweet by striking an empathetic tone.

“Before we begin, I’d like to take a few moments to discuss the deeply tragic situation in Texas and Louisiana. As we all know, our Gulf Coast was hit over the weekend with a devastating hurricane of historic proportion,” Trump said. “Torrential rains and terrible flooding continue to pose a grave danger to life and to property.”

America is grieving with families who lost loved ones and praying for those impacted by the storm, said Trump, who praised the heroism and courage of life-saving first responders on the ground in Texas.

“They represent truly the very best of America,” the president said. “In difficult times such as these, we see the true character of the American people, their strength, their love and their resolve. … And together, we will endure and we will overcome.”

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Trump’s tweet Wednesday morning — and his rhetoric on Wednesday afternoon — appeared to be a delayed response to criticism that his prior comments lacked empathy.

“Empathy for the people who suffered” is what the president was missing, former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer told Fox News on Tuesday. “That, in my opinion, should have been the first thing he should have said was that his heart goes out to those people in Houston who are going through this and that the government is here to help them recover from this.”

Harvey made landfall in Texas on Friday as a Category 4 storm. It has brought historic amounts of rain to parts of Texas and produced life-threatening flooding. At least 20 people have died, according to reports, and thousands of people have been displaced from their homes.

Trump on Tuesday repeatedly heaped praise on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the coordinated response to the storm — which he often described in grand terms — shouted out his Cabinet members, noted that FEMA Administrator Brock Long “has become very famous on television over the last couple of days,” admired a crowd of largely supportive Texans, and went on a brief riff about the name “Harvey.”

“Sounds like such an innocent name, right?” he said. “But it’s not innocent. It’s not innocent.”