Trump to visit Puerto Rico next Tuesday

United States President Donald Trump has said he would travel to storm-ravaged Puerto Rico next Tuesday.

Trump, while speaking in the Roosevelt Room, said it was the earliest date he could reach the devastated island, "due to first responders' ongoing relief and recovery efforts."

He added the U.S. territory was "literally destroyed."

"I know many Puerto Ricans, and they're great people and we have to help them. It really was devastated. Some people say, I read it this morning, it's literally destroyed. The infrastructure was in a bad shape as you know in Puerto Rico before the storm, and now in many cases, it has no infrastructure, so it's, you're really starting from almost scratch," the CNN quoted him, as saying.

He said he may also stop in the U.S. Virgin Islands during the Tuesday trip.

Trump, speaking later on Tuesday, during a news conference alongside Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, said a "massive effort" was underway in Puerto Rico to help the flattened U.S. territory recover.

"We have been really treated very, very nicely by the governor and everyone else," he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump vowed that federal assistance was on its way to Puerto Rico, a day after he commented for the first time in days about the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria since it made landfall on the U.S. territory.

"Thank you to Carmen Yulín Cruz, the Mayor of San Juan, for your kind words on FEMA etc. We are working hard. Much food and water there/on way," he wrote on Twitter.