Trump arrives in Texas for the second visit since Harvey

APD NEWS

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US President Donald Trump arrived in Houston on Saturday to meet with victims of Hurricane Harvey.

Trump was accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, and a handful of cabinet members, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Veteran Affairs Secretary David Shulkin.

On his second visit to the region since the storm made landfall in the US last week, Trump was greeted by a group that included Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.

Trump tried on the role of "comforter-in-chief", playing with children in an evacuation center and passing out food and supplies to those in need after Hurricane Harvey’s assault on Houston. He had been criticized earlier in the week for not showing sufficient empathy on his first trip to the storm-battered Texas coast.

The visit came after a week of historic flooding in the area that killed at least 40 people, displaced more than 1 million and dumped as much as 127 cm of rain.

Trump asked Congress late Friday for an initial 7.85 billion US dollars for hurricane recovery efforts. The request comes as Washington faces tough budget negotiations. Abbott has said that his state may need more than 125 billion US dollars.

(CGTN)