JERSEY CITY, N.J. — President Donald Trump on Sunday scoffed at “politically motivated ingrates” who had questioned his administration’s commitment to rebuilding Puerto Rico after a pulverizing hurricane and said the federal government had done “a great job with the almost impossible situation.”
Trump’s latest tweets sought to defend Washington’s attentiveness to recovery efforts on a U.S. territory in dire straits almost two weeks after Hurricane Maria struck. The president spent Saturday ensconced in his New Jersey golf club and on Sunday attended an international golf competition near New York City.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz on Friday accused the Trump administration of “killing us with the inefficiency” after the storm. She begged the president, who is set to visit Puerto Rico on Tuesday, to “make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives,” and appealed for help “to save us from dying.”
Cruz said Sunday that “there’s only one goal, and it’s saving lives,” adding that all she did “was ask for help.”
“I know the good heart of the American people and I know that when a mayday sound goes off, they come to the rescue,” she said in a television interview.
Under control
Trump, meanwhile, appeared unconcerned with the optics of spending his Sunday afternoon watching The Presidents Cup at the Liberty National Golf Club as the crisis continued. Trump was a guest in the commissioner’s hospitality suite perched above the course’s 14th hole, and he waved several times at news cameras positioned briefly on the grass below.
When Trump presented the trophy to Team U.S.A., he dedicated it to the people of Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida still recovering from hurricane devastation. Referring to Puerto Rico, Trump said: “We have it under really great control.”
Trump spent years hammering his predecessor, Barack Obama, both for playing golf and leaving Washington too often.
“President Obama should have gone to Louisiana days ago, instead of golfing,” he tweeted in August last year, after severe flooding in the state. “Too little, too late!”
Trump’s weekend tweets have shown him to be contemptuous of any complaints about a laggard U.S. response to the natural disaster that has imperiled the island’s future. He has repeatedly blamed the press for what he sees as unfair coverage of the situation on the ground, where power is out and many people are without food, water and fuel.
“We have done a great job with the almost impossible situation in Puerto Rico. Outside of the Fake News or politically motivated ingrates … people are now starting to recognize the amazing work” done by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the military, the president tweeted.
The day before, Trump had lashed out at Cruz, deriding “poor leadership ability” by her and others in Puerto Rico “who are not able to get their workers to help.”
He added, without elaboration, “They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.”
Punching back
In times of disasters, leaders often shelve partisan differences. But Trump has a penchant for punching back against critics, whatever the circumstances.
“When the president gets attack, he attacks back,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said, who adding that the mayor’s comments were “unfair, given what the federal government has done.”
But to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Trump’s tweets were “unspeakable.”
He characterized the president as “speaking from his fancy golf club, playing golf with his billionaire friends, attacking the mayor of San Juan, who is struggling” to bring electricity, food, water and gas to the island. “I don’t know what world Trump is living in.”
Ohio Gov. John Kasich said, “When people are in the middle of the disaster, you don’t start trying to criticize them. …I don’t know what to say.”
