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		</div><p>President Donald Trump has set aside his focus on talking up Storm Harvey recovery efforts to speak directly to the suffering of victims, saying: <i>&#8220;All of America is grieving with you.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Mr Trump&#8217;s remarks on the ravages of the storm came at the top of an address in Springfield, Missouri, about the tax code.</p>
<p>The president sought to reassure those who had lost loved ones and property.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;We are here with you today, we are here with you tomorrow, and we will be with you every single day after to restore, recover and rebuild,&#8221;</i> he said.</p>
<p>Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Trump tweeted that on his Tuesday trip to Texas he had witnessed &#8220;first hand the horror &#038; devastation&#8221; produced by Harvey.</p>
<p>He wrote that after seeing the widespread damage, &#8220;my heart goes out even more so to the great people of Texas!&#8221;.</p>
<p>But Mr Trump saw little damage during his visit to Corpus Christi &#8211; mostly boarded-up windows, downed tree branches and broken fences.</p>
<p>And that was through the tinted windows of his SUV as his motorcade took him from the airport to a fire station in a city already nearly back to normal.</p>
<p>The president deliberately kept his distance from the epicentre of the damage in Houston to avoid disrupting recovery operations.</p>
<p>Mr Trump also visited Austin during Tuesday&#8217;s trip, when he met with officials at the state emergency operations centre.</p>
<p>Governor Greg Abbott said Mr Trump showed &#8220;genuine compassion&#8221; on the short flight to Austin as they watched video footage of the flooding in Houston.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;The president was heartbroken by what he saw,&#8221;</i> Mr Abbot said.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">After witnessing first hand the horror &; devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey,my heart goes out even more so to the great people of Texas!</p>
<p>&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/902881712010653697?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 30, 2017</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>But Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary to former president George W Bush, said there was something missing from Mr Trump&#8217;s remarks in Corpus Christi: <i>&#8220;Empathy for the people who suffer.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Mr Trump plans to return to the region on Saturday to survey the damage and meet with some victims, according to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.</p>
<p>He pledged that his administration would work tirelessly to help the region recover.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;We are going to get you back and operating immediately,&#8221;</i> Mr Trump told a crowd outside a Corpus Christi fire station about 30 miles from where the storm made landfall on Friday.</p>
<p>Mr Trump was eager to get the federal disaster response right. But he missed clear opportunities to strike a sympathetic note for the multitudes suffering.</p>
<p>The president did not mention those who died in the storm or those forced from their homes. He basked in the attention of cheering supporters outside the fire station where officials briefed him on the recovery.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;What a crowd, what a turnout,&#8221;</i> Mr Trump declared before waving a Texas flag from atop a step ladder positioned between two fire engines.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;This is historic. It&#8217;s epic what happened, but you know what, it happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything.&#8221;</i></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">No flood will ever eclipse our Texas flag or our American spirit. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/txlege?src=hash&;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#txlege</a> <a href="https://t.co/Pb5k072Jam">pic.twitter.com/Pb5k072Jam</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) <a href="https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/902987343883325442?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 30, 2017</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>Mr Trump is clearly determined to seize the moment and show a forceful response to Harvey, mindful of the political opportunities and risks that natural disasters pose for any president. He has been dogged by low approval ratings and self-created crises.</p>
<p>It has long been presidential practice to avoid visiting the most devastated areas of a natural disaster while recovery is still in the early stages, to avoid getting in the way or diverting critical resources. In Texas, residents seemed to understand.</p>
<p>Before Mr Trump landed in Texas, Louis Sirianni arrived at his beach house in Rockport, about 20 miles outside Corpus Christi, to assess the damage.</p>
<p>Mr Sirianni said he appreciated Mr Trump&#8217;s gesture and understood why there were no plans to take him into the hardest-hit area.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;He&#8217;d see enough if he came along here in a helicopter,&#8221;</i> he said on a balcony accessible only by a 12-foot extension ladder.</p>
<p>The president, during his stop in Austin, said it was a &#8220;sad thing&#8221; that the recovery would be a &#8220;long-term&#8221; operation.</p>
<p>His largely upbeat reassurances about a speedy recovery, though, stood in contrast to the more measured assessments coming from emergency management officials.</p>
<p>There is a long, difficult road ahead in recovering from a storm whose flooding has displaced tens of thousands, those officials have cautioned.</p>
<p>Mr Trump&#8217;s promise of swift action on billions of dollars in disaster aid is at odds with his proposed budget.</p>
<p>It would eliminate the programme that helps Americans without flood insurance rebuild their homes and cuts grants to help states reduce the risk of flooding before disaster strikes.</p>
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