Trump hands out supplies during Puerto Rico visit

President Trump handed out supplies to Puerto Ricans during his visit to the hurricane-ravaged island on Tuesday, including paper towels, flashlights and rice. 

Trump handed the supplies out to hurricane victims at Calvary Chapel in Guaynabo.

Video and press reports from the event show Trump tossing paper towels into the crowd. He is also seen handing out flashlights.

“Flashlights? You don’t need ‘em anymore,” Trump said. “You don’t need ‘em.”

It was unclear what exactly Trump meant when he suggested people no longer needed flashlights. More than 90 percent of the island remains without electricity following the Category 4 storm, which severely damaged Puerto Rico’s electrical grid.

The president met with local officials for a briefing on the island’s recovery efforts earlier in the day, during which he highlighted the work of Puerto Rican officials by name while noticeably leaving out San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. 

Trump also said that Puerto Rico’s hurricane recovery had thrown his budget “a little out of whack,” and compared Hurricane Maria’s death toll to the thousands that died from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Sixteen people have died in Puerto Rico after the hurricane.

“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.