President Donald Trump tosses paper towels into a crowd in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, in 2017.Evan Vucci/AP
Puerto Rico’s leading newspaper, El Nuevo Día, has endorsed Joe Biden in what his campaign says is the first presidential endorsement in the paper’s 50-year history.
In an editorial published on Sunday, El Nuevo Día concluded that the Trump administration “has shown an overwhelming amount of inattention, disdain and prejudice against our people.” Along with President Donald Trump’s infamous paper towel throwing, it mentions the president asking about whether the United States could trade Puerto Rico for Greenland. More broadly, the editorial catalogues his disastrous response to Hurricane Maria. (For more on this front, be sure to read Mother Jones reporter AJ Vicens.)
After Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans are the second largest group of Latino voters in Florida, where polls show Biden only slightly ahead of Trump. Compared to Cubans, Puerto Ricans are much more likely to support Biden, but they’ve tended to vote at lower rates. Biden traveled to the Orlando area last month to make his pitch to Puerto Rican voters.
In contrast to Trump’s actions, El Nuevo Día wrote that Biden has promised to create a Puerto Rico working group that would report directly to the president, expand Puerto Ricans’ access to Medicaid and food assistance, and increase federal funding for education on the island.
The editorial concludes by stating that endorsing Biden puts El Nuevo Día on the side of “our most democratic values” and in opposition to the “politics of hate, division and chaos that President Trump and a significant part of the Republican Party have supported.”
“The world is a much more dangerous and unsustainable place, in large measure, because of this President’s domestic and international policies,” the editorial argues. “The votes from our extended homeland in favor of Biden’s Plan for Puerto Rico will make our island and the world safer and more prosperous places for everyone.”
