Here's the latest in the
Trump outrage industrial complex: since landing on Puerto Rico, Trump has made a number of disparaging comments about the extent of the disaster, acting pretty entitled. Trump expressed fiscal concerns:
"I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you are throwing our budget out of whack. We've spent a lot of money in Puerto Rico."
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And worse, he has downplayed the death toll, which cannot be accurately measured due to the lack of death certificates. They can't be issued quickly enough to catch up.
“If you look at the — every death is a horror, but if you look at a
real catastrophe like Katrina and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds of people that died and what happened here with a storm that was just totally overbearing. No one has ever seen anything like that. What is your death count?"
Governor Ricardo Rosselló replied "Sixteen."
Trump said they should be "very proud" and called the disaster response a "miracle". Yet, FEMA has still not authorized full disaster relief for Puerto Rico.
So, we know this much about Trump: if you praise him, he loves you. If you put pressure on him, he hates you. If you'll remember, the media cycle leading up to his Puerto Rico response was full of Trump being told that he isn't doing anything and tons of journalists asking "Why isn't anyone talking about Puerto Rico?" That put a chip on his shoulder, and made him frustrated and want to prove that he was doing well. So he comes across this way most likely because of that.
Here is the full remark he made about the death toll:
"Sixteen people certified. Sixteen people versus in the thousands. You can be very proud of all of your people and all of our people working together. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people. You can be very proud. Everyone around this table and everyone watching can be very proud of what's taking place in Puerto Rico."
Trump also briefly brought up Hurricane Harvey:
"In Texas, it came in and did devastation and went out into the coast. It came in three times and would lot up and come in. Nobody has ever seen water like that. They saved 16,000 lives in Texas. Hard to believe. Between the helicopters and all of them. The Coast Guard in Texas saved 16,000 lives. They went through the hurricane, and there are not too many people who would have done it. Believe me."
So, let's play a game - everyone's talking about gun control right now, right? Well, which Trump tweet will make everybody forget about guns completely and swivel into the next news cycle with total amnesia? I give it 2 or 3 days. I'll be here to report the nonsensical thing, at least.
I mean, can we just please have a bit of memory? Let's reflect on the past week, shall we?
We went from the North Korean nuclear threat to the NFL protests to Puerto Rico to the Las Vegas shooting. It's pretty clear that's all just a ride at this point, a pain parade. No one is going to do a barking thing about a single one of these issues at any point. We're just here to fulfill our part of the wheel, and roll on, from aimless pain-issue to the next.
