President Donald Trump called a potential coastal spine system to protect Houston and its shipping channels a “crazy thing” and scoffed at the price tag on Thursday.

During his campaign rally at the American Airline Center in Dallas, Trump said he gave billions and billions of dollars already to the state for Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts.

“You made a fortune on the hurricane,” Trump said of Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Houston and much of Southeast Texas in 2017, killing more than 100 people and destroying or damaging more than 100,000 homes.

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But Trump — speaking with a smile as the crowd laughed — said all that money that wasn’t enough for U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and state officials such as Gov. Greg Abbott, whom he said came to him asking for more.

“‘Sir, we want one more small request,’” Trump said recalling the conversations. “‘It’s not much and we appreciate you listening to us. We want to build a dam in the ocean.’”

Trump said he asked them how much it would cost.

“They say it’s only $10 billion, I’m supposed to be happy,” Trump said. “Oh, let’s see can we give Texas an extra $10 billion for some crazy thing that may work or it may not?”

Watch the video: Trump’s Hurricane Harvey comments

Since Hurricane Ike hit Texas in 2008, state and federal officials have been studying the idea of a 70-mile coastal barrier aimed at protecting Houston’s shipping channel from hurricanes. Often called the Ike Dike, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has estimated it could cost up to $31 billion to build.

Trump’s comments are not going over well with Houston area Democrats.

U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher said on Twitter that Trump’s comments are “not a surprise. It is a sign of his lack of empathy, of understanding and interest. He has never bothered to understand what actually happened, or what we need to recover.”

“This is not a laughing matter,” Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia said. “This is not an opportunity to make a point that Texas has enough money.”

Garcia said Trump should be working harder to make sure the federal bureaucracy is helping Texas get funds that have been tangled up in Washington for months. In February 2018, Congress agreed to send over $4 billion to Texas for disaster mitigation repairs to make sure the state is better able to weather future storms. The federal government is still working on the rules for that money and it is not expected to release it for another six months, according to state officials.

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Thursday’s rally is not the first time Trump has caused a stir with comments related to Hurricane Harvey. In June 2018, Trump was on a conference call with state and federal leaders discussing hurricane season preparedness. In that call, he praised the Coast Guard for heroic rescues during Harvey, but said the high number of water rescues was due to people taking their boats out to watch the storm roll in.

"Sixteen thousand people, many of them in Texas, for whatever reason that is. People went out in their boats to watch the hurricane,” Trump said then. “That didn't work out too well.”

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez at the time took umbrage with the president’s remark and noted that many civilians made an “extraordinary effort” with their own boats to rescue neighbors, relatives and pets as more than 50 inches of rain overwhelmed the city.

“I didn't see anyone taking the approach that would reflect his comments,” Gonzalez said then. “I'll be sure to invite the president to ride out the next hurricane in a jon boat in Galveston Bay the next time one approaches.”

Trump knows firsthand what happened during Harvey. In the days after the storm made landfall in August 2017, Trump visited Corpus Christi to meet with emergency responders. Then he went to Houston on Sept. 2 to see the damage and to meet with victims at the George R. Brown Convention Center, which served as a shelter.