President Donald Trump and wife Melania plan to visit Texas Tuesday to see the hurricane and flood-stricken state.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced the news Sunday, and the first lady’s communications director Stephanie Grisham said Melania Trump will be joining her husband.
The rain is expected to still be falling when they arrive as millions of Texans are in the middle of massive floods precipitated by Hurricane Harvey.
State officials are assessing the visit to ensure that Trump and the first lady are not endangered by the ongoing crisis. The areas that the pair plan to visit remain tentative and contingent upon the severity of weather conditions.
Trump has actively commented on the devastation on his Twitter account since the hurricane first hit Texas last weekend. He has been effusive in his praise for how state disaster response teams have handled the crisis, engaged his cabinet with two teleconference calls and officially declared Texas a disaster area.
“Wow,” went his Sunday morning tweet. “Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood! We have an all out effort going, and going well!”
An hour earlier, he noted, “Many people are now saying that this is the worst storm/hurricane they have ever seen. Good news is that we have great talent on the ground.”
Some of Trump’s usual critics in the news media are suggesting that the president is providing too much credit to the magnitude and efficacy of Texas’s response to the disaster.