The Latest: Trump tours tornado devastation in Alabama

AUBURN, Ala. (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump's trip to Alabama to survey tornado damage (all times local):

12:30 p.m.

President Donald Trump is surveying damage in Beauregard, Alabama, the community hardest hit by Sunday's tornado that killed 23 people in a rural, eastern part of the state.

The president and first lady Melania Trump saw trees that appeared to have been snapped in half. The twister ripped roofs off houses. Tree roots were ripped from the grown. There were holes where houses once stood. A homemade "Make America Great Again" greeted the president.

Trump spoke with families affected by the tornado and got a briefing from local officials.

Commenting on the destruction, Trump said: "We saw things that you wouldn't believe."

The tornado, with 170 mph (270 kph) winds, left a path of destruction nearly a mile wide.

9:06 a.m.

President Donald Trump is heading to Alabama to survey damage from a deadly tornado outbreak that devastated a small town, killing nearly two dozen people.

Trump is expected to tour rural Lee County in eastern Alabama, where 23 people died Sunday in an E4 tornado that carved a path of destruction nearly a mile wide.

It was one of at least 36 tornadoes confirmed to have touched down across the Southeast in a deadly weekend outbreak.

Trump has said he's instructed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to give Alabama "the A Plus treatment" as the state recovers, marking the latest example of Trump's differing rhetoric concerning states that voted for and against him.

Trump had already been scheduled to fly south Friday for a weekend at his private Mar-a-Lago club.