“To know that I’ve been here nine years – everything that I’ve worked for is just gone”. The timing, coming amid a heated presidential campaign, drew criticism from some local officials and Republicans political opponents, including GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Advertisement
The flooding has created political headache for the White House as critics blasted Obama for being too slow to visit the state.
Going door-to-door and trailed by cameras, he offered sympathy to residents as they took a break from the cleanup to talk about the damage. “What’s absolutely heart-wrenching to me as a mayor is to see my citizens’ lives laying on those streets in front of their houses”, he said.
“Honestly, Obama ought to get off the golf course and get down there”, he said.
“That’s fine. All these public officials need to see how bad the devastation is so that we can get the government mobilized to come out and give us as much assistance as we can”.
President Barack Obama walked down Judith Drive Tuesday, a debris-lined street in Zachary, a small town in the northern part of East Baton Rouge Parish. The interim pastor at Greenwell Springs Baptist Church, Tony Perkins, is also the president of the Family Research Council (FRC), according to an LGBT-focused online publication, similarly titled The Advocate.
Leslie Andermann Gallagher surveys the flood damage to her home on August 17, 2016, in Sorrento, Louisiana.
More than 115,000 people have registered for federal disaster aid, while some 20 million dollars has been distributed to individuals so far, the state government said.
John Bel Edwards says officials are closely monitoring a tropical disturbance that threatens to move into the Gulf of Mexico, anxious it could wreak havoc on areas of his state that are recovering from recent flooding. But he added that the severity of the flood “is testing our spirit in ways we have not seen since the challenges posed by Hurricane Katrina” in 2005.
“This is not a photo opportunity”, argued a little later the president, who has been the subject of some criticism for failing to cut short his vacation to visit earlier in Louisiana.
However, Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards had asked Mr Obama to delay his visit because presidential visits require a huge retinue of Secret Service agents and tie up local and state law enforcement resources needed elsewhere in disasters.
Edwards also said during the interview he doesn’t have time to deal with the politics surrounding the president’s visit to the state while also trying to manage the response and recovery.
“I’m just glad he’s here”, Nungesser told MSNBC in an interview as Obama departed the airport for the flood zone. He subsequently dispatched FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to the region.
Obama was in Baton Rouge to tour the flood-ravaged area. More than 100,000 Louisiana residents have applied for federal aid, while the fed itself has set aside $127 million in emergency funds for victims.
Obama also visited the family of Alton Sterling and the family members of the Baton Rouge police officers who were killed in clashes in July.
Advertisement
Trump and his running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, visited Baton Rouge on Friday.
