Trump on defensive over Maria response
President to travel to Puerto Rico next week
WASHINGTON President Donald Trump said he would visit the storm-wrecked territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands next week as he defended his administration’s response to the third powerful hurricane to hit the United States in a month.
Trump said Tuesday that Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands “have been devastated — and I mean absolutely devastated — by Hurricane Maria.”
But after getting generally high marks for his administration’s handling of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Trump has now found himself on the defensive for the preparations for Maria.
Unlike those previous hurricanes, the response to Maria has been complicated by a mix of geography, logistics and economics. Puerto Rico is a predominately Spanishspeaking island already beset by bankruptcy. And while they’re U.S. territories whose residents are U.S. citizens, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands sit a thousand miles off the coast of Florida.
Rep. Nydia Velazquez, a native Puerto Rican who represents parts of New York City, called Maria “Trump’s Katrina,” a reference to the 2005 hurricane that devastated New Orleans and became a symbol of federal neglect by the administration of then-President George W. Bush.
“The most fundamental duty of the president of the United States is to protect the homeland,” she told CNN on Tuesday. “That includes Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The administration has not been able to comprehend the fact that people in the Puerto Rico are dealing with life and death issues.”
Only about 5 percent of the island has power, including just 11 of its 69 hospitals, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said. Only about half the island has access to drinkable water, and much of the island remains cut off from communication to the outside world.
But unlike Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to get high marks from the effected territories. “FEMA people have been wonderful,” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said Tuesday. And after meeting with Trump by teleconference Tuesday, the governor thanked Trump in a number of English-language tweets, commending “leadership, quick response & commitment to our people.”
Still, Trump’s sensitivity to the issue showed in a string of tweets Monday night, when he appeared to criticize Puerto Rico for a lack of preparedness for what its governor called the biggest and most catastrophic hurricane to hit in a century.
“Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble,” Trump tweeted.
It was the first time he had tweeted about Puerto Rico since the day the storm hit, and rankled some of the same officials who have otherwise praised the federal effort.
“You don’t put debt above people, you put people above debt,” said Cruz.