Trump gets broad praise for initial storm responses

Hurricane Harvey was just beginning to unleash its full fury on Houston when President Donald Trump took to Twitter to praise new emergency management chief Brock Long: "You are doing a great job - the world is watching!"

To Mark Merritt, a former Federal Emergency Management Agency official in the Clinton administration, the tweet seemed premature. "I was having a 'Brownie' flashback," said Merritt, referring to Michael Brown, the FEMA administrator lauded by president George W. Bush for doing a "heckuva job" during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In Trump's case, however, the social media "attaboy" proved more prescient. Facing off against a pair of historic storms - first Harvey in Texas and Louisiana, then Hurricane Irma through the U.S. Virgin Islands and Florida then parts of the Southeast - Trump's administration has earned bipartisan praise for coordinating the federal response with state and local officials, avoiding the type of catastrophe that marked the Bush administration's response to Katrina, a storm that killed more than 1,800 people.

Harvey and Irma wreaked widespread destruction that will take years and billions of dollars to recover from, and the death toll from the two storms, including in the Caribbean, has reached over 100, according to authorities. Experts caution that the affected communities will need consistent support and attention.

But for a Trump administration whose first eight months has been marked by squabbles and a lack of legislative accomplishments, the initial competence in managing the storms represented a chance to take credit. Trump is slated to visit Florida on Thursday to view the aftermath of Irma's destruction, officials said.

"While I'm preaching caution to make sure people understand that this is an ongoing effort and that there's still going to be long, painful days ahead, I am doubling down on my assertion that this is the best integrated, full-scale response effort in our nation's history," Thomas Bossert, Trump's homeland security adviser, told reporters Monday.

Several major policy questions have been raised in the wake of the storms, including whether Trump will reconsider his proposals to slash FEMA's grant programs and his administration's hostility to regulations aimed at protecting the environment. But overall, emergency management veterans said, Trump and his team deserve acknowledgment for getting through the first phase of the crisis in a way that inspired public confidence.

At the request of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the president signed a declaration, before the storm made landfall, to authorize disaster relief funds available to individuals. And Trump is working with Congress to authorize $7.9 billion in emergency funds for Harvey relief.

"President Trump, for all the negatives we've heard about him, has done the right thing: He picked a great team and let them do their job," said Merritt, now a private consultant.

Administration officials said that on several occasions, Trump picked up the phone and, unbeknownst to aides, called Abbot and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards to ask whether they needed anything.

Trump has developed a reputation as a chief executive uninterested in delving into the minutiae of policy. But aides said the president was attentive and asked detailed questions in the numerous briefings from Bossert. Trump led several conference calls that included agency officials, spoke with Cabinet members ahead of Harvey and convened a full Cabinet meeting at the presidential retreat at Camp David last weekend as Irma made landfall in Florida.

"His basic direction was to do the right thing and do it in a timely fashion," said Doug Fears, the senior director of resilience policy at the National Security Council.

Credit: By David Nakamura - The Washington Post

Caption: FEMA chief Brock Long, seen Tuesday, won quick kudos from President Donald Trump during Hurricane Harvey.

Andrew Harnik/AP