President Donald Trump said Thursday that “certainly, we’re being hit with a lot of hurricanes,” as Hurricane Irma made its way through the Caribbean on the likely path to make landfall in Florida.
“Are you concerned, Mr. President, that FEMA may be spread too thin right now?” a reporter asked Trump as the President sat next to the amir of Kuwait. The Federal Emergency Management Agency coordinates the government’s disaster response.
“Well FEMA is doing an incredible job, as you all know,” Trump responded. “I mean, you’ve been reporting it. You’ve seen how incredible they are. And there’s a great bravery to what they’re doing.”
“But certainly we’re being hit with a lot of hurricanes,” he added. “We’ve never had a thing like this where you get hit with Harvey, which was about as bad as it gets, certainly from the standpoint of a water dump, and then you get hit with Irma, and there’s one right behind Irma. I guess you probably know, but a smaller one, but nevertheless right behind.”
He also tipped his hat to the Coast Guard.
Trump summarized Irma’s path through the United States’ territories in the Caribbean, saying it “could have been far worse” for Puerto Rico, and that the island “really escaped the brunt” of the storm. The U.S. Virgin Islands, he said, “got hit very hard. Very, very hard.”
“We have people right now on the Virgin Islands, and we’ll see how that is, but it’s been hit very, very hard,” he said.
