Live: President Trump lands at Marine Corp Air Station Cherry Point in Havelock

President Donald Trump flew into Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in Havelock on Wednesday morning, welcomed by Gov. Roy Cooper and Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, as well as local leaders.

The leaders sat for a round table discussion right in the hangar at Cherry Point, where the president said he and the federal government are prepared to do whatever it takes to make things perfect again.

Trump promised a swift response in terms of federal aid and thanked the countless community leaders that have stepped up to mitigate the fall out from the disastrous hurricane and resulting flooding.

Officials took turns giving their assessment of the situation on the ground for the president. He will next travel to New Bern to survey the damage.

The president’s connection to North Carolina is strong. His daughter-in-law Lara is from Wrightsville Beach, where the Hurricane Florence made landfall.

While promising a speedy response from federal agencies, the federal aid is only as good as the bureaucracy that distributes it. We’ve seen first hand how painfully slow that process can be, with hundreds of millions of dollars in federal relief for 2016’s Hurricane Matthew still sitting idle in state coffers.

Many of those same communities were also hit hard by Florence.

In any case, the early attention paid to the Old North State by the president should jump start the governmental efforts to distribute aid to those effected.