Trump is just so damn sick of those whiny babies in Puerto Rico and their stupid humanitarian crisis
After a couple of days in which his responses to the crisis in Puerto Rico somehow managed to lurch themselves over the increasingly low bar labeled “presidential behavior,” Donald Trump apparently looked at the standards of basic human decency this morning and said, “Fuck it, let’s do limbo instead.” Taking time out of his busy, semi-weekly golfing holiday schedule, Trump hopped on Twitter this morning to attack San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who gave a press conference yesterday in which she had the shocking temerity to suggest that Trump’s government is being lethally inefficient in its handling of the response to the devastation wrought on the territory by Hurricane Maria.
Trump responded to Cruz’s comments—in which she outright told the world, “We are dying,” and begged for aid from all possible sources—by personally insulting her leadership abilities, and suggesting that Puerto Rican workers weren’t doing enough to help their own people in the wake of a disaster that shattered massive portions of the territory’s infrastructure. (He also got some digs in at “Fake News,” because when you’re shitting the bed with this much fervor, you might as well get it all out.)
Trump’s otherwise-standard cyberbully response to anyone criticizing him, ever, has kicked up a fresh hornet’s nest of complaints about his handling of the Puerto Rico crisis. Simmering resentments about Trump’s actions—his current status on the golf course, his decision to spend the last week publicly attacking football players instead of offering up messages of support, the general inefficiency of the government response—has now turned into outright rage.
Few were as vitriolic as Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose family is from Puerto Rico, and who’s been helping to organize relief efforts to raise money for the territory. Miranda minced no words this morning, telling Trump, “You’re going straight to hell” for his response to the territory’s crisis.
In the meantime, there are 3.4 million people, very few of whom have access to power, fresh water, or food, living in Puerto Rico right now. PBS’s NewsHour has a guide to the best ways to donate help to them right here.