Kenneth Kozak
President Donald Trump is again assuming the role of national consoler as he traveled to Tennessee on Friday to tour neighborhoods where lives and homes were destroyed by tornadoes that swept through parts of the state earlier this week.
Trump is touring hard-hit communities in Putnam County, where a tornado tore a 2-mile-long path, killing 18 people, including five children under 13. Many more people were injured, some critically.
Statewide, the death toll stood at 24 from a pair of storms…but Trump and other officials on the ground said 25 had been killed.
Trump was met upon his arrival by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and other top officials.
Such trips have become familiar for the president, who has visited numerous scenes of disaster and tragedy after hurricanes, mass shootings, and wildfires during the past three years.
Trump said the Tennessee tornadoes were “real devastation like you’ll never see hope again.”
Asked if he has a message for the victims of the storm, Trump said, “We love them. They’re special people. It’s an incredible place, incredible state, tremendous heart.”
The Republican president won the heavily GOP state by 26 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election and trounced Democrat Hillary Clinton in Putnam County by a margin of more than 2-to-1. Davidson County, the other Tennessee region devastated by tornadoes, is a Democratic enclave in the reliably Republican red state.
Trump was ending the day at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, attending a pair of fundraising events to benefit the Republican Party and his reelection campaign.
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