President Donald Trump is off to Texas Tuesday—specifically Corpus Christi, the coastal town south of Houston where Hurricane Harvey first made landfall in the Lone Star State.
According to the White House, Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will visit a fire station in Corpus Christi for a briefing on relief efforts there. The president will then travel to Austin, where state officials will further brief him before he returns back to Washington Tuesday afternoon.
How much can the president do in such a short trip? It’s notable that Trump isn’t going to Houston, where continued rain has compounded the flooding. Trump said Monday he would be returning to Texas and Louisiana this weekend—though the White House hasn’t offered details yet about where the president will be traveling. For now, there’s little for Trump to offer as first responders and ordinary citizens alike keep working to save and help Harvey victims. For the first time in his presidency, perhaps, Trump isn’t the biggest story in the country.
The Kelly Factor—John Kelly is probably better prepared than most White House chiefs of staff for the job of managing the president’s response to the disaster in Texas. After all, it was just a few weeks ago the new chief of staff was the secretary of Homeland Security and oversaw the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
I asked the White House about Kelly’s role. “He has been a great asset to the president during this time due to his working knowledge of DHS and FEMA,” said press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Photo of the Day
People make their way out of a flooded neighborhood after it was inundated with rain water, remnants of Hurricane Harvey, on August 28, 2017 in Houston, Texas. (Photo credit: Getty Images.)
In his joint press conference with the Finnish president Monday, President Trump defended his pardon of former sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona.
“He’s done a great job for the people of Arizona,” Trump said. “He’s very strong on borders, very strong on illegal immigration. He is loved in Arizona. I thought he was treated unbelievably unfairly when they came down with their big decision to go get him right before the election voting started, as you know. And he lost in a fairly close election. He would have won the election, but they just hammered him just before the election. I thought that was a very, very unfair thing to do.”
That’s one way to look at it. Another comes from Jon Gabriel, the editor in chief of Ricochet.com and a conservative resident of the Phoenix area. Writing at USA Today, Gabriel called Arpaio’s conviction for contempt of court the “tip of the iceberg” of all the despicable things the former sheriff did in his tenure.
2018 Watch—The Washington Examiner first reported that Arpaio may consider running in the Republican Senate primary against sitting Arizona senator Jeff Flake, a Trump nemesis. If others, such as declared candidate Kelli Ward and state treasurer Jeff DeWit (a Trump surrogate during the 2016 campaign who is being considered by the president’s political team), also take on the incumbent, that crowded field could split the anti-Flake vote.
But don’t expect it to happen, says one veteran Arizona journalist. “Arpaio’s spent past 25 years claiming he might run for higher office,” tweeted Jeremy Duda. “Never does it. Don’t fall for it.”
Did Trump seem particularly peeved in his Phoenix speech last week? Bloomberg reports the president didn’t like the work of his advance team for the Arizona event, which had a small crowd in a large space.
“As his surrogates warmed up the audience, the expanse of shiny concrete eventually filled in with cheering Trump fans,” report Jennifer Jacobs and Kevin Cirilli. “But it was too late for a longtime Trump aide, George Gigicos, the former White House director of advance who had organized the event as a contractor to the Republican National Committee. Trump later had his top security aide, Keith Schiller, inform Gigicos that he’d never manage a Trump rally again, according to three people familiar with the matter.”
Nork Watch—“North Korea Fires a Missile Over Japan”
Song of the Day—“Salvation Song” by the Avett Brothers.
