Trump hails effort in ‘miracle’ Puerto Rico survival
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Touring a slice of Hurricane Maria’s devastation, President Donald Trump congratulated Puerto Rico on Tuesday for escaping the higher death toll of “a real catastrophe like Katrina” and heaped praise on the efforts of relief workers, without addressing the often hysterical media criticism the federal response has drawn.
“Really nothing short of a miracle,” he said of the recovery.
Trump pledged an all-out effort to help the island while adding, jokingly, “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. We’ve saved a lot of lives.”
Known deaths from Maria in the U.S. territory stand at 16. As for Katrina, as many as 1,800 people died in 2005.
The visit offered fresh evidence of the unconventional path Trump has taken in responding to the onetwo-three punch from hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. His effusive praise for federal relief efforts has been accompanied by displays of empathy for those who are suffering.
Trump said his visit was “not about me” and thanked local officials for offering kind words about his administration’s recovery effort and invited one to repeat the “nice things” she’d said earlier. Trump also singled out Gov. Ricardo Rossello for “giving us the highest praise.”
“Every death is a horror,” he said, “but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina and you look at the tremendous, hundreds of 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 has ever seen anything like this.” He told local officials “you can be very proud of all your people, all of our people working together.”
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz joined other officials at the air base for a briefing where she shook the president’s hand and reversed
some of her earlier criticisms of the administration’s response.
Cruz said “I saw a real connection between the reality and the White House staff. I think they finally understood.” Air Force One brought the president, first lady Melania Trump and aides to Puerto Rico for a tour stretching through the afternoon.
In the upscale Guaynabo neighborhood, one of the fastest to recover, 200 people cheered Trump’s visit and crowded around him for cellphone photos. At a table of supplies in a church, Trump tossed rolls of paper towels into the friendly crowd.
“There’s a lot of love in this room, a lot of love,” Trump said. “Great people.”
Earlier, on approach to the airport, Air Force One descended over a landscape marked by mangled palm trees, metal debris strewn near homes and patches of stripped trees.
“I appreciate your support and I know you appreciate ours,” Trump said. “Our country has really gone all out. It’s not only dangerous, it’s expensive. But I consider it a great honor.”
Before leaving Washington, Trump said Puerto Ricans who have called the federal response insufficient “have to give us more help.”
Large-scale protests against Trump, predicred by many media outlets, failed to materialize.
The trip is Trump’s fourth to areas battered by storms during an unusually violent hurricane season that has also seen parts of Texas, Florida, Louisiana and the U.S. Virgin Islands inundated by floodwaters and hit by high winds.
Trump’s visit follows a weekend in which he had aggressively pushed back against critics, including Cruz. He had responded angrily on Twitter, deriding the “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,” he added, scoffing at “politically motivated ingrates” who had criticized the federal work, and insisting that “tremendous progress” was being made.
Trump and his wife also visited Navy and Marine Corps personnel on the flight deck of the USS Kearsarge.
Even before the storm hit on Sept. 20, Puerto Rico was in dire condition thanks to government mismangement and corruption that had left its infrastructure, including the island’s power lines, in a sorry state. Maria was the most powerful hurricane to hit the island in nearly a century and unleashed floods and mudslides that knocked out the island’s entire electrical grid and telecommunications, along with many roads.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said more than 10,000 federal officials are on the ground on the island, and 45 percent of customers now have access to drinking water. Businesses are also beginning to reopen, with 60 percent of retail gas stations now up and running.