Trump blasts San Juan mayor
PUERTO RICO: US President Trump blasted the increasingly critical mayor of Puerto Rico’s capital city for ‘‘poor leadership ability’’ in not being able to ‘‘get their workers to help’’ in hurricane relief, saying the federal government is doing a ‘‘fantastic job.’’
The president said San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz had been complimentary to him only a few days ago, but ‘‘has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump.’’ He said the mayor and ‘‘others’’ on the island ‘‘want everything done for them.’’
In a series of tweets, he also slammed ‘‘Fake News CNN and NBC,’’ which he said ‘‘are going out of their way to disparage our great First Responders as a way to ‘get Trump.’ ‘‘ He said the reports were not fair to responders or their efforts.
Hurricane Maria killed at least 16 people on the island when the storm hit last weekend.
Cruz, in emotional appeals on TV on Saturday, has become the face of Puerto Rican officials distraught over what some charge is an insufficient response by the US government to the crisis.
While Trump described the federal response as ‘‘amazing,’’ Cruz publicly called on the president to speed up the delivery of food, water, medicine and fuel, and ‘‘to make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives’’.
‘‘I will do what I never thought I was going to do. I am begging, begging anyone who can hear us to save us from dying,’’ Cruz said. ‘‘If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency.’’
Cruz said it wasn’t just her saying the island needs help. ’’(A) three-star general (is) saying we don’t have enough, so, it’s not only me.’’
While increasing amounts of water, food and medicine have been arriving on the island of 3.4 million people as a distribution bottleneck eases, many - particularly in remote and mountainous areas - remain desperate for water and other necessities.
In the face of pointed criticism from the mayor and other Puerto Rican officials, Trump unleashed a series of tweets saying ‘‘...Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They.....want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.’’
Cruz, who has appeared regularly on US cable news programmes, rejected a statement by acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, who called the government’s response ‘‘a good news story in terms of our ability to reach people and the limited number of deaths that have taken place’’. The mayor retorted: ‘‘This is, damn it, this is not a good news story. This is a ‘people are dying’ story.’’
Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello said yesterday that he had spoken to the president many times. ‘‘He has reiterated his commitment and that we are a priority. And he has shown that whenever we have asked he has delivered.’’- TNS