President Trump tossed rolls of paper towels into a crowd at a church Tuesday during a stop on his Puerto Rico tour meant to distribute aid.
Trump entered Calvary Chapel to cheers from the crowd. Signs in the room read “Let’s Make Puerto Rico Great Again” and “God bless You Mr. President,” according to a pool report.
Trump stood behind a table covered in supplies for the victims while a crowd gathered in front.
“There’s a lot of love in this room, a lot of love,” Trump said.
{mosads}He then handed some packages of rice out to the crowd, before picking up packaged rolls of paper towels and throwing them into the crowd as if they were basketballs.
At the event, people in the crowd photographed Trump as he was throwing the paper towels and a White House pool report suggested those in attendance enjoyed it. People caught two of the rolls, while another fell to the ground.
Back in the United States, however, the images received more negative scrutiny on social media, leaving it unclear how the colorful scenes will play out.
Trump is in Puerto Rico to survey the damage and meet with leaders in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which hit the island nearly two weeks ago.
Trump met personally with hurricane victims and received a briefing from local officials about the impact of the storm.
He said earlier in the trip that the storm had “thrown our budget a little out of whack because we spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico, and that’s fine.”
Trump also compared the death toll after Maria — which reached 16 as of Tuesday morning — to that of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which left thousands dead.
“If you looked — every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here with really a storm that was just totally overbearing, nobody has seen anything like this,” Trump said.