"We need more help," @ricardorossello just said on day 13 of the emergency response in Puerto Rico. (@potus lands here in two hours)— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) October 3, 2017
In Puerto Rico today:
“I think she’s come back a long way,” Trump said of Mayor Cruz. “And I think it’s now acknowledged what a great job we’ve done.”
“In Texas and in Florida, we get an ‘A+’, and I’ll tell you what, I think we’ve done just as good in Puerto Rico and it’s actually a much tougher situation,” he continued.
People are without water; people are without electricity; most of the inland area of Puerto Rico, per news reports this morning, is still inaccessible and difficult to travel through; but hey, the important thing is Trump is being praised.
“Now the roads are cleared, communication is starting to come back, we need their truck drivers,” he said. “Their drivers have to start driving trucks. We have to do that, so at a local level they have to give us more help.”
He congratulated “first responders, the military, FEMA” for their “incredible job” and thanked Puerto Rico’s governor. “He has said we have done an incredible job, and that’s the truth,” Trump said.
No, the roads are not clear. There is a shortage of diesel fuel. Half the island has no water, only 5% has electricity. But the governor told Trump he'd done "an incredible job," so it's all good!
And this is NOT Trump's Katrina!
“If you look at the — every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds of people that died and what happened here with a storm that was just totally over bearing. No one has ever seen anything like that. What is your death count?"
"16," responded Governor Ricardo Rosselló.
"16 certified," Trump said, and then told all leaders assembled that they should all be "very proud."
Proud? Proud 16 people are dead? Or proud of their horror? Oh, and Trump doesn't want Puerto Rico to forget how expensive it is:
We have gone all out for Puerto Rico," Trump said during the televised briefing Tuesday. "It's not only dangerous, it's expensive."
And while Puerto Rico clearly needs much more aid — including help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to repair its damaged infrastructure — Trump decided to focus on how much money it had already spent.
"You've thrown our budget out of whack," he said. "We've spend [sic] a lot of money in Puerto Rico."
I'm running out of words. The man is inhuman. "Monster" is becoming the only term that describes him.
The number of deaths in Puerto Rico is up to 34. Is Maria a catastrophe now?
ReplyDeleteTrump has no empathy and no idea how to speak appropriately, especially in crisis situations. He has such limited thought process and limited vocabulary that both Las Vegas and Puerto Rico are "miracles".
And why "miracle"? Is he just losing the ability to understand words?
ReplyDeleteThe video that travels around the world is Trump insulting Puerto Ricans by tossing paper towels into the crowd like a float rider tossing bead and trinkets in a Mardi Gras parade.
ReplyDeleteCampaigning was the same carnival show over and over again, with Trump feeding off the acclaim of roaring crowds. That was his milieu, and he was up for the show.
He had no idea that being president is complicated and difficult. When Trump is faced with challenges and crises that call for a variety of appropriate actions and responses, he obviously fails at the tasks. In fleeting moments, he may be conscious of his failures, and the stress could be affecting his mental state, which seems to me to have deteriorated over the several months since he was inaugurated.
Here I am playing armchair psychiatrist, but Trump's behavior is so bizarre and unusual that I doubt I'm the only one sorely tempted to try to figure out WTF is wrong with him.