“We saw things you wouldn’t believe,” Trump said as he stood amid the wreckage and rubble of Beauregard, the site of the nation’s deadliest tornado in six years.
Trump’s travels through Alabama — in a helicopter for an aerial tour, through a debris-strewn neighborhood and later at the Baptist church that has been a hub of relief efforts — were a welcome presence in Beauregard, where at least one of the storm’s victims had flown a Trump campaign flag outside his home and where Trump captured most of the vote.
A few hundred people lined the two-lane county road by Providence Baptist Church to try to glimpse Trump from the grassy shoulder or the nearby cemetery.
During his stop at Providence, Trump met with relatives of the 23 storm victims, as well as volunteers and emergency workers. He posed for pictures and signed autographs, including at least one in a 12-year-old boy’s Bible.
The president ultimately emerged to a display of 23 white crosses, each an individual tribute to a victim of the storm, whose winds are believed to have reached 170 mph. With the first lady, Melania Trump, at his side, the president moved slowly down the line of memorials before he waved to a crowd in the distance and left, ultimately bound for a weekend in Palm Beach, Florida.
“He was very interested in all aspects of not only the sympathy and how people survived, but also how the federal government was doing, how the federal government could help,” said Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., who accompanied the president Friday. “I had no complaint whatsoever.”
During his presidency, Trump has won high marks for responding assertively to storms in places like Texas and Florida but has been widely criticized for his handling of two hurricanes in Puerto Rico, a pattern critics attributed to red state-blue state politics.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.