Puerto Rico: Trump compares Maria and Katrina deaths

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President Donald Trump has told Puerto Rico officials they should be "proud" they did not lose thousands of lives as in "a real catastrophe like Katrina".

Mr Trump also said the storm-ravaged US territory had thrown the American budget "a little out of whack".

Before landing on the island, Mr Trump graded his administration's response to Hurricane Maria as an "A plus".

Puerto Rico officials have criticised the US government's handling of the natural disaster as too slow.

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Following the visit, the White House announced it was preparing to send a $29bn (£22bn) disaster aid request to Congress.

Of that, $13bn would be for hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, Florida and Texas, while the other $16bn would be for the government-backed flood insurance programme.

Tuesday's five-hour presidential trip to the Puerto Rican capital San Juan came two weeks after the storm devastated the island.

"I've been to Puerto Rico many times and the weather is second to none but sometimes you get hit - and you got hit," Mr Trump told officials at an Air National Guard base.

"Every death is a horror," the president added, "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 overpowering, nobody's ever seen anything like this."

In his apparently impromptu remarks, he turned to emergency responders to ask how many Puerto Ricans had died as a result of the storm.

"What is your death count as of this moment? Seventeen? Sixteen people certified, 16 people versus in the thousands," he said, referring to the 2005 hurricane that killed 1,833 people in New Orleans.

The number killed by Maria was later increased to 34, with 19 killed directly by the hurricane, according to a spokesman for Governor Ricardo Rosello.

Mr Trump also pointed out the impact on US spending from storm recovery on the island, which itself was already facing a budget shortfall of $72bn (£54bn).

"Now, I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack because we've spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico, and that's fine," he said.

"We've saved a lot of lives," he added.