“We saw things you wouldn’t believe,” Trump said as he stood amid the wreckage and rubble of Beauregard, the site of the nation’s deadliest tornado in six years.
Trump’s travels through Alabama — in a helicopter for an aerial tour, through a debris-strewn neighborhood and later at the Baptist church that has been a hub of relief efforts — were a welcome presence in Beauregard, where at least one of the storm’s victims had flown a Trump campaign flag outside his home and where Trump captured most of the vote.
A few hundred people lined the two-lane county road by Providence Baptist Church to try to glimpse Trump from the grassy shoulder or the nearby cemetery.
During his stop at Providence, Trump met with relatives of the 23 storm victims, as well as volunteers and emergency workers. Dressed in his presidency’s iteration of what political strategists sometimes describe as “disaster casual” — a windbreaker, showing a fraction of an open-collar shirt, and khaki pants — he posed for pictures and signed autographs, including at least one in a 12-year-old boy’s Bible.
“We couldn’t get here fast enough,” Trump said at the church. “I wanted to come the day it happened, but I spoke with the governor, and she said, ‘Just give us a little more time. We need a little more time.'”
One of the volunteers, Ada Ingram, who knew 10 of the people killed by Sunday’s tornado, later approached reporters and said the presidential visit was “a godsend” that would bond the small community. She said the crowd roared with applause after Trump signed the Bible.
“I enjoyed him coming,” said Ingram, who said she would vote again for Trump. “The situation is bad. And there are going to be people who will say, ‘Why did he come to my town.’ I don’t know why. I don’t why the hurricane happened. But there is a reason.”
The president ultimately emerged to a display of 23 white crosses, each an individual tribute to a victim of the storm, whose winds are believed to have reached 170 mph. With the first lady, Melania Trump, at his side, the president moved slowly down the line of memorials before he waved to a crowd in the distance and left, ultimately bound for a weekend in Palm Beach, Florida.
“He was very interested in all aspects of not only the sympathy and how people survived, but also how the federal government was doing, how the federal government could help,” said Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., who accompanied the president Friday. “I had no complaint whatsoever.”
Trump was warmly received in Beauregard, and as his motorcade left, people chanted, “Trump! Trump! Trump!”
Trump’s willingness to autograph Bibles was not out of step with his appeal to evangelical voters, whom he has wooed and won over the years. Many see him as the champion of their spiritual and political values.
Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas and one of Trump’s prominent evangelical supporters, said it was “very appropriate” for a president to sign a Bible, adding that people ask him to sign their Bibles “all the time.”
Once, on the 2016 campaign trail, Trump autographed a Bible that was reported to go for $3,500 on eBay. A few evangelical celebrities, like Duck Dynasty stars and Tim Tebow, have also occasionally signed Bibles.
And in Alabama, Roy Moore, the former state Supreme Court chief justice who nearly won a U.S. Senate seat in 2017, has also been known to affix his signature to books of Scripture.
“This is Alabama, and although not overly common, it is also not rare for citizens to give politicians their Bibles to sign,” said Angi Stalnaker, a Republican political consultant in the state. “To read into this any sort of ‘We believe Trump is God’ or anything like that would be unfair. It’s just something that on occasion happens in the South.”
During his presidency, Trump has won high marks for responding assertively to storms in places like Texas and Florida but has been widely criticized for his handling of two hurricanes in Puerto Rico, a pattern critics attributed to red state-blue state politics.
He engaged in a caustic war of words with the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, over the federal response to Hurricane Maria, castigating her for assailing the recovery efforts, blaming Puerto Rico for making its own problems and even threatening to pull government responders out because of what he deemed ingratitude. When he did finally visit Puerto Rico after a delay, he drew scorn for throwing rolls of paper towels to residents in need.
When wildfires ripped through California late last year, Trump faulted state leaders for what he said was mismanaged forest policy and talked about withholding federal emergency money, even though firefighters and natural resource experts said he mischaracterized the issue.
But he also visited and made common purpose with the state’s Democratic leaders, including Jerry Brown, then the governor, with whom Trump had feuded repeatedly over his two years in office, before later resuming his criticism and threats.
In Alabama, federal and state officials have pledged a robust, sustained response to the tornado, and on Friday, Trump heralded his government’s handling of the storm’s destruction.
Earlier in the week, Trump approved a federal disaster declaration for Lee County, which made residents eligible for grants for temporary housing and home repairs and loans for uninsured property. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Friday that it had already approved more than $42,000 in assistance in the county and that more applications for aid were pending.
FEMA — and U.S. presidents — have long grappled with the consequences of severe storms in the South, where hundreds of deaths in the past decade alone have been blamed on tornadoes. Trump is the fourth consecutive president, at least, to visit Alabama to survey tornado damage.
“Unfortunately, there are times when you have these natural disasters,” Jones, the Democratic senator, said in an interview. “That’s part of the president’s job, I think, to make sure that people are consoled and to make sure people know that people care outside the immediate area.”
As Trump and the Beauregard community mourned the dead, the state was preparing for the possibility of more severe weather this weekend. Although forecasters have gradually become more concerned about dangerous weather in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee, experts said that Alabama remained in some jeopardy.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.