Reporters call out Trump’s claim that he saw Harvey ‘horror & devastation’

Trump didn't even visit Houston.
 By 
Sasha Lekach
 on 
Reporters call out Trump’s claim that he saw Harvey ‘horror & devastation’
Donald Trump was safely inside at the Texas Department of Public Safety Emergency Operations Center in Austin, Texas, far from the flooding and "devastation." Credit: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump traveled to Texas on Tuesday to assess the damage and rescue efforts from Hurricane Harvey. But he didn't actually visit the most storm-ravaged areas in Houston or talk to any storm survivors.

But that didn't stop the president from talking like he had.

In a tweet Wednesday morning, he said he had witnessed the "horror & devastation" caused by the storm "first hand."

Reporters who had covered the presidential trip to Texas were quick to note the president mostly met with officials and visited places like Corpus Christi and Austin. Those cities weren't as affected like Rockport or Houston, which took the brunt of the storm.

Trump went to a briefing at a Corpus Christi fire station, toured the emergency operations center in Austin, and met with the Texas governor and other emergency officials. No relief shelter visits or viewings of destroyed homes or city streets. Just read the first sentence of this Politico story: "It was a presidential trip to a deluged state where the president didn’t meet a single storm victim, see an inch of rain or get near a flooded street."

But Trump did make it to the state of Texas, so for the president that's close enough.

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Sasha Lekach

Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.

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