While Donald Trump was on a post-Hurricane Florence tour and visiting River Drive in New Bern, North Carolina, he kept his thoughts on important topics, with a beautiful yacht in particular catching his eye.
According to the Washington Post , Trump was taking his time visiting survivors of the deadly hurricane when he immediately spied the yacht. This yacht had been tossed by the storm into one of the survivor’s backyards, which the president found more than a little amusing, and Donald Trump asked, “Is this your boat? Or did it become your boat?”
The homeowner assured Trump that the yacht was not actually his and was a product of Hurricane Florence, yet was docked on his property now. The yacht, which is reported to be white with tan accents, caught the eye of the president yet again, who joked that the man had fared all the better because of the hurricane.
“At least you got a nice boat out of the deal.”
It has been reported that while Donald Trump was clearly smiling when he spoke these words, it is unclear whether he was actually joking or being serious, with some news outlets suggesting that this clearly showed the president’s utter lack of empathy for victims of Florence, especially as many of the survivors of the hurricane have lost their homes and all of their worldly possessions.
Analysis: ‘At least you got a nice boat,’ Trump tells man during storm tour https://t.co/LJrhyeYVMA
— MSN News (@MSNNews) September 20, 2018
In New Bern, where Trump was busy touring, over 350 people needed to be rescued from desperate circumstances after the hurricane struck, as this location is so close to both the Trent and Neuse rivers. With over one foot of rainfall soaking this city, along with the water that was carried in from the Atlantic by Hurricane Florence, 25 people are reported to have lost their lives in North Carolina.
However, it must be said that whether the yacht comment was a joke or not, Donald Trump was clearly intrigued at the sight of the boat, and with a large number of reporters and victims of the storm present, Trump once again queried the fate of the yacht, asking, “That boat is wiped out, or not?”
The crowd responded by saying that it looked like it might be “okay.” The president then looked at it again, claiming that despite its relatively good shape, he still “wouldn’t want to cross the ocean in it.”
“I think it’s incredible, I think it’s incredible. To see what we’re seeing — this boat, I don’t know what happened, but this boat just came here. And do you know whose boat that is? They don’t know whose boat that it.”
With Donald Trump touring post-Hurricane Florence areas like New Bern in North Carolina, no one can call his visits dull, as his comments about the beached yacht clearly show.