Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy expressed his astonishment and anger at a tweet from President Trump in which Trump said he’d soon be visiting Missouri, a state he won in the 2016 presidential election.
“My god. At this exact moment people are dying in the worst natural disaster of his Presidency & instead of leading he’s attacking Democrats.” the Connecticut senator tweeted.
Trump’s full tweet said, “I will also be going to a wonderful state, Missouri, that I won by a lot in ’16. Dem C.M. is opposed to big tax cuts. Republican will win S!”
The tweet by the president came just after he had also tweeted he was hoping to visit parts of Texas that have been lashed by Hurricane Harvey, which was still dumping inches of rain along the coastal parts of the state even though it had recently been downgraded to a tropical storm.
The heavy rainfall stretched out over days along the Texas coast is producing wide-scale flooding that could take parts of the state years to recover from.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Sunday praised the federal response to the disaster.
“We could not be more appreciative of what the federal government has done, from the president on down,” Abbott told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
“Because, everything we have asked for they have given us,” he concluded.
The storm has caused other political controversies as well.
As Harvey was a Category 4 hurricane barreling into Texas on Friday night, news broke from the White House that the president had pardoned Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and also that the controversial advisor Sebastian Gorka would be leaving his duties.
Some commentators said the White House timed the release of the news so that it would be overshadowed by the media’s hurricane coverage.
The president and Murphy also have history that reaches back to the early days of the administration.
In February, the New York Post published a story that the White House was doing background research on Murphy, believing he could emerge as a presidential contender in 2020.
