Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States of America and author of The Art of the Deal signed a boy’s Bible at a disaster relief centre on Friday in Alabama.
Trump also signed baseball caps and a $100 bill that a volunteer handed him at Providence Baptist Church, in Alabama, where tornadoes have taken 23 lives in the last week.
The first couple stopped off in Alabama, where Trump received 62.1 per cent of the vote in 2016, before heading down to spend the weekend in Mar-a-Lago.
Donald and Melania spent the afternoon consoling families who had lost their homes to tornadoes which have reached up to 170mph in the southern state.
They spoke to victims of the disaster in the Baptist church where clothes, nappies, toiletries and school supplies are being distributed and took part in a walking tour of the neighbourhood levelled by the storm, DailyMail.com reports. Before they went to spend the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, which is a mansion the president owns in Florida.
Alright, let’s give him some credit. Someone may make a dollar profit out of that signed $100 bill. Bet that Bible’s gone up in value too.
The president who visited Puerto Rico two weeks after hurricanes hit and claimed 3,000 lives, which he disputed at the time, said of the Alabama devastation:
I’ve never seen anything like it.
We love you all. We love the state of Alabama.
The first couple honored the dead, holding a moment of silence and standing hand-in-hand before a memorial of crosses to represent the 23 victims of the storms.
The Trumps arrived in Alabama early Friday afternoon via helicopter, after landing in Air Force One in Georgia. Their aerial tour reportedly lasted 25 minutes, and afterwards the president told victims federal emergency managers would stay as long as they need to.
Trump said to reporters:
It’s hard to believe actually. We saw things you wouldn’t believe.
Trump also praised the local Republican governor ‘who has done an incredible job’, while on his tour of Beauregard, the neighbourhood hit hardest by the storm.
Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey told the president ‘we’re stronger together’ before the first couple headed down to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend to raise funds for his re-election campaign.
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Tim Horner is a sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated with a BA Journalism from University College Falmouth before most his colleagues were born. A previous editor of adult mags, he now enjoys bringing the tone down in the viral news sector.