The following article by Jenna Johnson was posted on the Washington Post website October 20, 2017:
Junk haulers take from items ruined by floodwaters at the Houston home of Rosie Alvarez, right. (Michael Stravato for The Washington Post)
HOUSTON — Sitting on Mary Maddox’s back porch, which flooded with 22 inches of water when Hurricane Harvey hit nearly two months ago, is a Lady of the Night plant from Puerto Rico that a friend gave her. Ever since Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, she says, she has paused at the blooming plant when she passes it, rubbing a leaf and saying a prayer for those still without water or electricity.
Often, the prayer is accompanied by frustration with President Trump, whom she voted for and who visited this neighborhood after Harvey.
The following article by Marlow Stein was posted on the Daily Beast website October 2, 2017:
On Saturday, President Trump spent time hate-tweeting the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico—in between holes of golf at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club. And on Sunday, he took in the Presidents Cup golf tournament in Jersey City, and strangely chose to dedicate the event’s trophy to the hurricane victims in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico.
While the president spent his weekend indulging in a decidedly white-collar sport, 3.4 million U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico are struggling to cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, where half the island nation remains without drinking water and only five percent have electricity.
“The president’s response has been widely criticized all week, and it still doesn’t seem entirely clear that he understands the gravity of the situation,” John Oliver announced on Sunday’s edition of Last Week Tonight.
The HBO host then threw to a clip of Trump outside the White House on Friday where, before boarding a private jet en route to his Jersey golf club (at taxpayers’ expense, of course), the president remarked, “The loss of life, it’s always tragic, but it’s been incredible… the results that we’ve had, with respect to loss of life. People can’t believe how successful that has been, relatively speaking.”
Oliver was, understandably, beside himself: “How are you even trying to take a victory lap right now? The only way he could have saved that statement is if he added, ‘And don’t forget, I just kind of ramble! I know nothing. I talk because silence sounds weird. Try and think of me as a parrot who’s memorized some human sounds: yabba-dabba doo, Jumanji, bye-bye!”
Trump’s “rosy assessment” of the terribly dire situation in Puerto Rico has been disputed by numerous reporters, aid workers, and officials on the ground—including San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who begged President Trump to “make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives.” Trump, as is his wont, responded by lashing out at Mayor Cruz on Twitter, and alleging some sort of Democratic conspiracy:
Retired Lt. General Russel Honoré, who was in charge of the U.S. military response to Hurricane Katrina, was deeply critical of Trump’s Twitter rant, telling CNN: “The mayor’s living on a cot, and I hope the president has a good day at golf.”
The following article by Andrew Reeves was posted on the Washington Post website October 2, 2017:
On Sept. 29, President Trump said that “the government of Puerto Rico will have to work with us to determine how this massive rebuilding effort … will be funded and organized and what we will do with the tremendous amount of existing debt already on the island.” (The Washington Post)
What explains the Trump administration’s lukewarm reaction? Is it part of the generally unusual nature of the Trump presidency, or a response to Americans’ general ignorancethat Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens? Perhaps. But more generally, presidents tend to respond in proportion to an affected place’s partisan loyalty to the president’s party in previous elections and its political clout in the next presidential election. Continue reading “Donald Trump’s lukewarm response to Puerto Rico was pretty predictable. Here’s why.”
