Is Donald Trump ever going to acknowledge the massive loss of life in Puerto Rico?
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| These paper towels are SUPER absorbent |
Independent
investigations conducted separately by The New York Times, Penn State University and Harvard University estimated Maria’s death toll could be in
the thousands.
The official death count
has remained at 64, though Puerto Rican officials quietly conceded this week in a report to Congress that over
1,427 deaths may be directly or indirectly linked to the historic storm.
In the months since
Maria, President Donald Trump has been remarkably silent about Puerto Rico’s
struggle to recover. Trump, a notoriously prolific tweeter, hasn’t mentioned
the hurricane on social media since November, and he hasn’t visited Puerto Rico
since October.
The only time Trump
publicly addressed the death toll was during his only post-Maria visit to the
island, in which he suggested Puerto Ricans were lucky Maria wasn’t a “real catastrophe” like Hurricane Katrina
in 2005, which left over 1,800 dead.
In mid-October, Trump conceded that he believed Maria was actually “worse than Katrina,” but still gave his administration “a 10” out of 10 in its response to the storm.
So why hasn’t Trump
publicly acknowledged the likely staggering number of deaths? Or personally
provided updates on Puerto Rico’s monthslong struggle to restore power to its
residents? Or met with any of the hundreds of thousands of displaced Puerto
Ricans?
HuffPost asked the White
House on Thursday if Trump would care to comment on Puerto Rico’s death toll,
given the growing indication that hundreds or thousands had died. In response,
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley provided a statement:
There’s only one official count and the actual counting of disaster related fatalities is the local responsibility of Puerto Rico. We have been supportive of Governor Rossello’s efforts to ensure a full accounting and transparency. Those grieving deserve no less. The whole of government remains focused on ongoing recovery and preparedness for the current Hurricane season.
When asked in a subsequent
email whether Trump still believes the federal response was adequate, Jessica
Ditto, deputy communications director for the White House, responded that “the
entire federal response was massive, historic and unprecedented.”
But many activists and
lawmakers disagree with the White House’s assessment. Some expressed sorrow on
Thursday over the Puerto Rican government’s discreet death toll concession, and
others tore into Trump for spending millions of dollars on the creation of a new armed service known as the Space Force instead of
sending more aid to Puerto Rico.
Tragically,
the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria is far higher than the
official count. The federal gov't hasn't done enough to assist or force
accountability. I’ve called for a bipartisan commission to investigate the
Trump Admin’s response. https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2018/06/23/why-was-federal-response-puerto-rico-flawed/MEqMAITwMh22p0E3Jx6YRO/story.html …
Trump’s public concern
over Puerto Rico’s recovery appeared to subside following a wave of self-congratulatory
statements from his administration on what it deemed a successful hurricane
response.
Just nine days after
Maria made landfall, then-acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke called
the government’s relief efforts “a good news story,” sparking outrage among lawmakers such as
Cruz.
“This is a
people-are-dying story,” Cruz told CNN in response to Duke’s
comments. “This is a story of a devastation that continues to worsen
because people are not getting food and water.”
For months, Cruz pleaded
with the Trump administration to send additional aid to help the millions of
lives uprooted by Maria, the most powerful storm to hit the the U.S. territory in at least 80 years.
“I am begging anyone
that can hear us to save us from dying,” Cruz said in televised remarks days before Trump’s October visit to the
island. “If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying. And you are
killing us with the inefficiency and bureaucracy.”
Trump responded to Cruz
by claiming she was simply playing politics and accused Puerto Rican workers of
not doing their part to help in relief efforts.
“Results of recovery
efforts will speak much louder than complaints by San Juan Mayor,” he tweeted
on Sept. 30, adding later that she exhibited “poor leadership.”
Days later, Trump and
first lady Melania Trump would arrive for their first and only
post-Maria visit to Puerto Rico, where the president would downplay the
devastation.
“Sixteen people versus
in the thousands,” Trump had said, comparing Maria’s death toll to Katrina’s.
“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.”
Following his remarks at
the briefing, Trump made a few other stops in San Juan, including at a
church where he made headlines by throwing paper towels to Puerto Ricans
displaced by Maria.
Trump also took several
opportunities during and after Maria to remind Puerto Ricans that their
government was $74 billion in debt, and that despite the historic storm, they
would still have to deal with their financial woes on the other side.
“When Mr. Trump
suggested that Puerto Rico’s plight had thrown the federal government’s budget
out of wack, and that Katrina was a worse disaster, well... that hit hard,”
Wanda Acosta, the 56-year-old owner of a boutique hotel in Rincon, Puerto Rico,
told HuffPost in an email Friday.
“Saying that Puerto
Ricans want everything done for them was outrageous!” she added. “Everyone was
out in the streets, on their farms, in their yards, repairing their businesses,
cleaning and clearing, helping and cooking and just surviving without power and
water.”
By the end of October,
Trump’s tweets about Puerto Rico had ceased. He had tweeted about Maria roughly
two-dozen times ― about the same number of times he’s tweeted attacks (one as recently as Friday) against NFL players who kneel
during the national anthem to protest police brutality.
By comparison, he’s
tweeted about special counsel Robert Mueller’s
Russia investigation over 85 times since Maria.
There have been
significant developments related to Puerto Rico’s recovery ― studies on the
number of fatalities, government corruption charges, the extraordinarily prolonged restoration of the island’s power. Trump hasn’t publicly
addressed any of them.
A Politico investigation published in March found Trump had
reacted far more aggressively to Hurricane Harvey than to Maria. He
visited Houston twice within the first eight days after Harvey struck the Gulf
Coast, killing over 100 people. He waited 13 days to visit Puerto Rico. It took
10 days for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to grant permanent disaster
aid in Texas, compared to 43 days for Puerto Rico, Politico reported.
“After witnessing first
hand the horror & devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, my heart goes out
even more so to the great people of Texas!” Trump tweeted at the time. Two days
later, he declared Sept. 3, 2017, a national day of prayer for the victims of
Harvey.
Nearly every indication
suggests Hurricane Maria was responsible for close to ― if not more than ― the
number of deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. President George W. Bush’s
legacy was, in part, defined by his administration’s widely panned response to
the natural disaster, which left over 1,500 people dead in Louisiana alone.
Bush’s approval rating
dramatically dropped in the wake of Katrina. Bush eventually took “full responsibility” for the federal failures, though not
before the then-head of New Orleans’ emergency operations called the federal
government’s slow response a “national disgrace.”
Despite significant
backlash, Trump emerged relatively unscathed from Maria’s destruction. His
response to it didn’t appear to have much of an impact on his approval rating,
as it continued to hover around 36 percent in the months after.
It has since climbed to 41 percent in recent weeks, according to the Pew Research Center. Despite public pressure, Trump did not further inject himself into the national conversation about Puerto Rico’s fight to recover.
It has since climbed to 41 percent in recent weeks, according to the Pew Research Center. Despite public pressure, Trump did not further inject himself into the national conversation about Puerto Rico’s fight to recover.
A George Washington
University study commissioned by Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló in December
to scientifically determine the excess deaths related to Hurricane Maria is
expected to be completed in the coming weeks and could finally provoke a
statement from Trump.
A spokeswoman for the
university told HuffPost that the study was expected to be released “this
summer.” It was initially slated for completion by late May, though the school
said in a statement that data collection had taken longer than expected.
“We owe it to the people
of Puerto Rico to have a precise number, along with the data we need to make
better preparations for future disaster situations,” Héctor Pesquera, secretary
of Puerto Rico’s Department of Public Safety, said in a statement Thursday.
“With this information, we can understand what procedures need to be in place
in Puerto Rico to prevent such a high loss of life from ever happening again.”