As Hurricane Florence Approaches, Trump Brags About Maria Response and Attacks San Juan Mayor

The administration “did an unappreciated great job in Puerto Rico” despite “a totally incompetent Mayor,” he tweeted.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

With Hurricane Florence set to make landfall later this week, President Donald Trump bragged about the federal government’s response to natural disasters last year that devastated Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. 

“We got A Pluses for our recent hurricane work in Texas and Florida (and did an unappreciated great job in Puerto Rico, even though an inaccessible island with very poor electricity and a totally incompetent Mayor of San Juan),” he tweeted Wednesday morning. 

Trump has repeatedly praised his administration’s work in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, calling it an “incredible, unsung success” and “one of the best jobs that’s ever been done.” That argument defied the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office’s own postmortem of the actions taken last year by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The report, which was released last week, found that FEMA employees were “overwhelmed” by the challenges of responding to hurricanes in the Caribbean, Texas, and Florida while managing a horrific wildfire season in California. At one point last October, the report noted, 54 percent of FEMA employees were not qualified for their assigned roles. FEMA Administrator William “Brock” Long acknowledged the stress employees were under during a congressional hearing last November, saying, “My staff is tapped out.”

Trump’s tweet Wednesday also escalated his war of words with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, a perennial target of the president’s ire. Cruz had lobbed two attacks at Trump on Tuesday night. Earlier in the day, Trump had cited Puerto Rico’s poor electric grid as a reason for the humanitarian disaster, which killed 2,975 residents, according to the official count. “It was in very bad shape, it was in bankruptcy,” he said.

Cruz, a vocal critic of the president’s leadership during Hurricane Maria, responded with two tweets:

In other tweets Wednesday morning, Trump promised that “FEMA, First Responders and Law Enforcement are supplied and ready” for Hurricane Florence, and he leveled another attack against Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. “Russian ‘collusion’ was just an excuse by the Democrats for having lost the Election!” he wrote.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate