You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

“We Did a Fantastic Job”: Trump Praises His Handling of Puerto Rico Despite 3,000 Deaths

HeadlineAug 30, 2018

“A fantastic job”—that is how President Trump is describing his administration’s response to the catastrophe in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria a year ago. Trump made the comment on Wednesday, a day after Puerto Rico adjusted its official toll from the storm to almost 3,000—that’s 46 times higher than the earlier death toll of 64. During his brief comment, Trump made no reference to any of the deaths on the island.

President Donald Trump: “Yeah, I think Puerto Rico—I think we did a fantastic job in Puerto Rico. We’re still helping Puerto Rico. The governor is an excellent guy. And he is very happy with the job we’ve done. We have put billions and billions of dollars into Puerto Rico. And it was a very tough one. Don’t forget their electric plant was dead before the hurricane. If you look back on your records, you’ll see that that plant was dead, it was shut, it was bankrupt, it was out of business. They owed tremendous amounts of money. They had it closed up. And then, when the hurricane came, people said, 'What are we going to do about electricity?' That wasn’t really the hurricane; that was gone before the hurricane. But we’ve—we’ve put a lot of money and a lot of effort into Puerto Rico. And I think most of the people in Puerto Rico really appreciate what we’ve done.”

President Trump was responding to a reporter’s question about the death toll of nearly 3,000. In addition to not mentioning the new death toll, Trump also lied about the status of Puerto Rico’s electrical system. The island only lost power after the storm. Soon after the president spoke, the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Carmen Yulín Cruz, responded on MSNBC.

Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz: “This is like telling somebody that’s gone through a fire that it’s their fault, that they didn’t run fast enough. No, it is your fault, Mr. President. Shame on yourself and your administration. You led us here to die because you were more concerned about the political spin than about the human reality that we were dying. And now that number, 2,975, will follow him wherever he goes for the rest of his life.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top