President Trump visited Central Texas on Friday, where they met with first responders and toured the impacted areas.

After the tour, Mr. Trump spoke at a roundtable event alongside Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and many other local and state officials.

Mr. Trump and Abbott promised to rebuild the devastated region, although the president recognized that what was lost can never be recovered. 

At one point during the roundtable, the President asked Abbott, "Do you want to take a couple of questions, Governor? Do you want to do that? Is the press going to be respectful of this event, this horrible event, this horrible tragedy?"

The President then called on Marissa Armas, a CBS News Texas reporter.

Armas asked the President, "Several families we have heard from are obviously upset because they say that those warnings, those alerts didn't go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved. What do you say to those families?"

The President responded, "Well, I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances. I guess, like Kristi said, a one in 500, one in a thousand years, and I just have admiration for the job that everybody did. It was just admiration. Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you. I don't know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that." 

The President continued, "I think this has been heroism and this has been incredible, and the job you all have done. It's easy to step back and say, 'Oh, what could have happened here or there? Maybe we could have done something differently.' This was a thing that has never happened before. Nobody has ever seen anything, I've never seen anything like this. I've gone to some real bad ones, and I've never seen anything like this. I admire you and I consider you heroes and heroines, and I think you have done an amazing job."

Mounting frustration over safety protocols, response

There is mounting frustration in Kerr County, which has the highest death toll of any county, over an apparent lack of answers to these questions.

Questions were raised with authorities during a news conference on Sunday about the timing and response initiated for flood warnings in that area along the Guadalupe. 

"As you all probably know, we have a special session coming up, and what happened in Kerrville is going to be a topic for the special session to address," Abbott said Sunday afternoon. "Need to evaluate what they know, how they respond, what they need, what's needed in that river basin at that location could be far different than was needed in some other river basin across the state."

On July 2 and July 3, the Texas Department of Emergency Management published a news release on its website, warning that something like the devastating flooding could happen, and that the threat existed. 

TDEM began mobilizing its assets to the Texas Hill Country area two days before the flooding happened. But many have asked why the campers weren't evacuated, given the threat. 

"That's a good question. We are focused on the 11 missing," Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice responded when asked at a Sunday news conference why the camp hadn't been evacuated.

The sheriff didn't answer the question either, and the news conference abruptly ended. 

Abbott also addressed the question on Sunday, saying the state is looking into the details of the warnings and timing of evacuations. He noted no one expected the water to be as high as it was, and said officials are looking at what kind of plan may have been in place or not to respond to the warning.

Abbott addressed the agonizing wait for families as the death toll climbs from Friday's devastating flash floods, saying he knows they want information and they want closure.

The governor and state officials said they want families to know that they are "working as swiftly as possible to get them accurate information that will provide that closure." 

Death has climbed to over 100, dozens still missing 

The death toll throughout Texas has now climbed to more than 100 people, and dozens remain missing. 

Later during the roundtable, Mr. Trump called on a different reporter who said, "At 1:00 in the morning, the technology only goes as far as it goes. Kids don't have their phones. Phones are dead. People by the riverside don't have electricity. They're not going to get a phone alert that way. As a developer going forward, knowing that everything was done lightning fast by Secretary Noem, by you, by the governor, and everybody else, you did everything right. What do we do next time, though, to make sure that people are alerted? If they're dead asleep, maybe an alarm system. Maybe a siren system. You might know better than I. But what do we do going forward? Because we've got to make sure that people get the alert when it's time to get the alert." 

President Trump responded, "Yeah, you'll probably have to do that. You'll probably come up with something very unique because there is no system right now. There's been no… this is… a thing like this has never happened that anybody knows. Certainly not to this extent. But I know the governor, and everybody is working on it, their meeting, and they'll figure something out. Go ahead, governor."

Abbott added, "Yeah. So we begin a session in ten days. We will address every single question that you just ask. You mentioned some of the ideas. There are many more, and we want to hear. Most importantly, we have to devise a response that's right for this community, and this community has to weigh in, and they need time to be able to convey that to us. But we're going to we're we're going to work on alerts. We're going to work on every single solution to make sure things like this don't happen again, not just in this community, but in other river basins across the state, also. So we will work to get it right, and we've jotted down, Joe, every idea that you just mentioned."