KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — President Donald Trump arrived Friday in Texas for a firsthand look at the devastation from the state's catastrophic flooding, but he has remained conspicuously quiet about his previous promises to do away with the federal agency in charge of disaster relief.
The Trump administration isn’t backing away from its pledges to shutter the Federal Emergency Management Agency and return disaster response to the states. But since the July 4 disaster, which has killed at least 120 people and left more than 170 missing, the president has focused on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of what occurred and the human tragedy rather than the government-slashing crusade that's been popular with Trump’s core supporters.
“It's a horrible thing,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House. He approved Texas' request to extend the major disaster declaration beyond Kerr County to eight additional counties, making them eligible for direct financial assistance to recover and rebuild.
Trump's shift in focus underscores how tragedy can complicate political calculations, even though he has made slashing the federal workforce and dramatically shrinking the size of government centerpieces of his administration's opening months.
Air Force One landed in San Antonio with Trump deplaning in a suit and first lady Melania Trump wearing more casual clothing, including a hat. The first couple will tour some of the hard-hit areas by air, then visit the state emergency operations center in Kerrville to meet with first responders and relatives of flood victims.
“This area is primarily pro-Trump,” said Harris Currie, a rancher from Utopia, Texas, near Kerrville, who said that having the president visiting boosts morale. “It’s the country, and that’s what got him elected. Do they expect it? No. Is it uplifting? Absolutely.”
Trump won Kerr County with 77% of the vote last year, and Currie said his visit is “something a president should do. It exhibits a level of leadership that a president should exhibit.” He also said the flood devastation can be fully understood only by seeing it first-hand.
“Pictures do not do it justice,” Currie said.
The president will get a briefing from officials in Kerrville, where he will joined by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.
Kerr County Commissioner Jeff Holt, who also is a volunteer firefighter, said the focus of Trump's visit should be “how we responded and what we’re going to do in the future.”
“In the future, we’re going to figure out how we get a little better at what we do,” Holt said.
Asked what he might tell Trump officials needed, Holt stressed the need for repairs to nonworking phone towers and “maybe a little better early warning system.” Trump himself has suggested that a warning system should be established, though he has not provided details on how that might happen.
It's relatively common for presidents visiting disaster sites to tour the damage by air, a move that can ease the logistical burdens on authorities on the ground.
Trump's predecessor, President Joe Biden, observed the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina and Hurricane Milton in Florida last fall by air before meeting with disaster response officials and victims on the ground.
Trump, though, has also used past disaster response efforts to launch political attacks. While still a candidate trying to win back the presidency, Trump made his own visit to North Carolina after Helene last year and accused the Biden administration of blocking disaster aid to victims in Republican-heavy areas.
First lady Melania Trump is accompanying the president, marking the second time this term that she has joined her husband to tour a natural disaster site.
During his first weekend back in the White House, Trump again visited North Carolina to scope out Helene damage. He also toured the aftermath of devastating wildfires in Los Angeles but used both trips to sharply criticize the Biden administration and California officials.
Trump has promised repeatedly — and as recently as last month — to begin “phasing out” FEMA and bring disaster response management “down to the state level.”
During Tuesday's Cabinet meeting, Trump did not mention those plans and instead praised the federal flooding response. Turning to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, he said, “You had people there as fast as anybody’s ever seen.”
Pressed this week on whether the White House will continue to work to shutter FEMA, press secretary Karoline Leavitt would not say.
“The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need,” Leavitt said. “Whether that assistance comes from states or the federal government, that is a policy discussion that will continue.”
Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, similarly dodged questions Friday about FEMA's future, instead noting that the agency has billions of dollars in reserves “to continue to pay for necessary expenses” and that the president has promised Texas, “Anything it needs, it will get."
“We also want FEMA to be reformed,” Vought added. “The president is going to continue to be asking tough questions of all of us agencies, no different than any other opportunity to have better government.”
While the focus is on FEMA at the federal level, local officials in Texas have come under mounting scrutiny over how much they were prepared and how quickly they acted.
Darrin Potter, a Kerr County, Texas, resident for 25 years who saw ankle-deep flooding in his home and knew people who were killed, said earlier this week, “As far as early warnings, I’m sure they can improve on that."
But he said all the talk about evacuating missed something important. The area where a wall of water ripped through was a two-lane road, he said.
“If you would have evacuated at 5 in the morning, all of those people would have been washed away on this road," he said.
During the Cabinet meeting, Noem described traveling to Texas and seeing heartbreaking scenes, including around Camp Mystic, the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 people were killed.
“The parents that were looking for their children and picking up their daughter's stuffed animals out of the mud and finding their daughter’s shoe that might be laying in the cabin," she said.
But the secretary also co-chairs a FEMA review council charged with submitting suggestions for how to overhaul the agency in coming months.
“We as a federal government don’t manage these disasters. The state does,” Noem told Trump on Tuesday.
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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim in Washington and Nadia Lathan in Ingram, Texas, contributed to this report.
Sean Murphy And Will Weissert, The Associated Press
