President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump traveled to Texas on Friday to meet with first responders and grieving families in the aftermath of last week's catastrophic flooding that has left more than 100 people dead.
At a roundtable event, Trump described how "a little narrow river" morphed into "a monster," devastating families in what he called an “unthinkable tragedy.”
“They’re still looking,” Trump said. “There’s a lot of missing children, possibly, mostly. We don’t know, but they’re still looking.”
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The Trump administration and officials in Texas — many of whom were present for Trump's visit —have faced scrutiny over the level of preparedness for the disaster response.
The president began the visit by receiving a briefing from local elected officials, joined by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. He then surveyed damage from the floods before meeting with National Guard members, local police officers and rescue workers. He also met with the families of victims from the floods.
Speaking at a roundtable in Kerrville, Texas, Trump expressed his deep condolences at the loss of life and the “anguish of our entire nation” in the aftermath of the devastation, the scale of which he said was hard to believe.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump began. “I’ve gone to a lot of hurricanes, a lot of tornadoes. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Comparing the flood that swept in to a “giant, giant wave in the Pacific Ocean” that the best surfers would be afraid of, the president described how families were still searching for missing loved ones in the wake of the catastrophe.
“A little narrow river that becomes a monster, and that’s what happened,” he said.
Pressed by a reporter on warnings and alerts that could have saved lives, Trump sharply rebuked the question, which he said “only a very evil person would ask.”
“I think this has been heroism,” he said. “This has been incredible.”
Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn traveled with Trump from Washington to tour the flood damage, and State Attorney General Ken Paxton, a staunch ally of the administration who is challenging Cornyn in next year's GOP primary, joined them on the ground. At the roundtable, Trump ticked through the attendance of Cabinet officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Numerous members of Congress. Rep. Chip Roy, whose district was impacted by the flood, and Rep. Dan Crenshaw also joined the event.
"I have to just give some of the names, because this is very unusual," Trump said of Crenshaw, who has broken with the president on occasion.
Later, he noted the presence of Dr. Phil, who is from Texas. "Oh, there's Dr Phil," Trump said. "You're looking good Phil. This is a hell of a situation, isn't it?"
Trump also commended the search and rescue and trauma teams deployed across the flood.
Trump was asked about improving alert systems to rouse residents during emergencies, even “if they’re dead asleep.” “As a developer going forward, knowing that everything was done lightning fast … What do we do next time?” said the reporter. “Maybe an alarm system. Maybe a siren system?”
Trump responded, “You’ll probably have to do that. You’ll probably come up with something very unique, because there’s no system right now. A thing like this has never happened.”
Authorities continue to search miles of the Guadalupe River for more than 150 people who remain missing as hopes of finding more survivors dwindle. Among those confirmed or feared dead are 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp in Hunt.
Trump on Sunday signed a major disaster declaration for Texas to make federal funding available for hard-hit Kerr County, where nearly 77% of voters backed him in the 2024 election.
The trip to Texas is Trump’s second to the site of a natural disaster since he was inaugurated for his second term; he visited Los Angeles in January after a wildfire devastated large swaths of Southern California. During his first term, he made multiple trips to Texas in 2017 in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and its deadly floods. The same year, he traveled to Puerto Rico to survey damage caused by Hurricane Maria.
The Trump administration has faced criticism from officials and lawmakers at various levels of government who have argued that recent job cuts at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, alongside plans to shutter the Federal Emergency Management Agency, prevented accurate forecasting and worsened the effects of the floods. Administration officials have repeatedly rejected those assertions.
Trump has pledged to “get rid” of FEMA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, and his administration has overseen a largely voluntary exodus of experienced personnel at the agency, fueling concerns about its ability to promptly respond to disasters. The concerns were heightened by a new policy from Noem mandating her approval for any agency spending in excess of $100,000.
Asked by NBC News on Thursday whether the new policy delayed FEMA’s response to the tragedy in Texas, Trump defended Noem.
“We were right on time. We were there — in fact, she was the first one I saw on television,” Trump told "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker in a phone call. “She was there right from the beginning."
Criticism of the disaster response has also focused on Kerr County's emergency management system after reports indicated local officials did not use warnings from FEMA to send text alerts when the severity and speed of the flooding heightened, catching hundreds of people in a region known as "flash flood alley" by surprise. In addition, Kerr County, which has a population of more than 50,000 people, had no siren system to alert residents, in part because some local officials felt it was too expensive to install.
Trump called for additional flood alarms in Texas on Thursday, though he argued that the storm was unprecedented and that “nobody ever saw a thing like this coming."
“After having seen this horrible event, I would imagine you’d put alarms up in some form, where alarms would go up if they see any large amounts of water or whatever it is,” he told NBC News.
Joe Herring, the mayor of Kerrville, told MSNBC’s Katy Tur this week that the state rejected an effort to install a siren system nearly a decade ago.
“The county government looked into that in 2017, and from what I heard, their grant application was denied,” Herring said. “I wasn’t in government at that time, but it sounds like we talked about it, we asked for help, and we were denied before.”
