How far away is Puerto Rico, from President Donald Trump’s perspective? “This is an island sitting in the middle of an ocean. And it’s a big ocean, it’s a very big ocean,” he said, on Tuesday morning, before a meeting with House members. Puerto Rico is, indeed, an island, but it is also an American island, inhabited by three and a half million United States citizens who are in immediate danger, owing to the havoc wrought by Hurricane Maria. The storm made landfall on the commonwealth more than a week ago as a Category 4 hurricane and swept it from end to end, destroying fields of crops and ripping the façades off of apartment buildings. Relief workers have still not been able to reach some towns in the interior. Trump announced that he would visit Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which were also hard hit, next Tuesday, which he said was the soonest practical date. Meanwhile, the majority of people in Puerto Rico remain without clean water, the electricity grid is inoperable, cell towers are down, roads are impassable, food is rotting, and many of the elderly and the sick have been left without care. All of this is happening in America, rather than some place distant from this country. But instead of emphasizing that closeness, or a sense of mutual obligation, Trump has, so far, focussed on how different Puerto Rico is, and what its people owe him, which is, above all, their gratitude.
“We have been really treated very, very nicely by the governor and by everybody else,” Trump said later, during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon with Mariano Rajoy, the Prime Minister of Spain. Trump was referring to the governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló, and his colleagues. “They know how hard we’re working and what a good job we’re doing.” When a reporter nonetheless asked Trump whether he had perhaps spent a disproportionate amount of time tweeting complaints about N.F.L. players kneeling during the national anthem, when he should have been rallying support for Puerto Rico, Trump bristled, and insisted that his attacks on the players were important for America. Then he went back to talking about what he had done for Puerto Rico—“I have plenty of time on my hands”—adding that the governor “is so grateful for the job we are doing. In fact, he thanked me specifically for FEMA and all the first responders.” Trump described that praise as “incredible” and “amazing,” and said, “We have had tremendous reviews from government officials.”
Governor Rosselló, as it happened, had spent the previous day giving interviews during which he had called urgently for more help for the island. He has expressed appreciation for the hard work that FEMA has been doing, along with members of the military—on Tuesday morning, the Marines were clearing roads—but he made it very clear that it isn’t enough. The mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, whom Trump also portrayed as an admirer, said that the island was in the grip of a “humanitarian crisis.” Congress has not acted; FEMA is still working with money appropriated for Hurricane Harvey. The Department of Homeland Security turned down a request from several members of Congress to waive the Jones Act, which places restrictions on shipping. And there is more that the government and military can do.
Puerto Rico is limping along, with what are meant to be backup generators using dwindling supplies of fuel. A number of air-control towers and radar installations are also down, preventing sufficient supplies from coming in. CNN reported that a children’s hospital in San Juan was running out of power for the ventilators that were needed to keep a dozen boys and girls alive—and that is in the capital, the most well-equipped and accessible part of the island. Dozens of hospitals and clinics are simply closed. Various headlines said that Rosselló has “begged” for help, but the plea he made was not humbling for him but humiliating for the rest of us, who have not done enough for our compatriots in Puerto Rico or in the Virgin Islands. “We are proud U.S. citizens,” Rosselló, who had come to the aid of other U.S. citizens in time of need, said. It was a point he was forced to make; as the Times noted, in a recent poll of people on the mainland, half did not realize that Puerto Ricans were natural-born American citizens.
Trump, at various instances, failed to correct that misapprehension. Before the meeting with House members, he said, “I grew up in New York, so I know many people from Puerto Rico. I know many Puerto Ricans. And these are great people, and we have to help them.” Indeed, he said that they were “fantastic people,” but he did not note, either then or during the press conference, that they were American people. Even in a tweet on Tuesday night in which he said “America’s hearts & prayers” were with Puerto Rico and that we would get through this “TOGETHER!,” he did not mention shared citizenship. He’ll likely get around to it—plenty of people in his party, including Marco Rubio, have made the point—but the delay has a cost. In a series of tweets on Monday night, which marked Trump’s first comments on Puerto Rico after a long interval, he stressed how different it was from Texas and Florida, because of logistics (it is an island) and also financial status. “Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble…” the tweets began. “It’s [sic] old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars....”—he continued the thought in a third tweet—“owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with. Food, water and medical are top priorities—and doing well. #FEMA.”
Trump’s reminder that Puerto Rico has bills to pay was, at best, ill-timed. In fact, it was hard to read it as anything but an injunction to lower expectations: Puerto Ricans were already poor—why would anyone think they would, or should, be in as good shape as Florida or Texas? Meanwhile, his comment about food, water, and medical care “doing well” was demonstrably false. The only limit to his blitheness was his penchant for dramatic language (with Prime Minister Rajoy, he called Puerto Rico a “wipeout”) and his tendency to brag. At the meeting with House members, Trump said, “We’ve gotten A-pluses on Texas and on Florida, and we will also on Puerto Rico.” The grading period seemed to have ended a moment later, when he added, “I think we’re really getting really good marks for the work we’re doing.”
At the press conference, Trump repeated that the big problem with getting help to Puerto Rico was “a thing called the Atlantic Ocean. This is tough stuff.” It is a tough body of water—all the more so, lately, due to a climate crisis that Trump denies—but that argument would be more persuasive if Maria had hit two days ago, rather than a week ago. Governor Rosselló observed that if Puerto Rico is not livable, its residents could always move en masse to the mainland. And why shouldn’t they move from one part of America to another, if they want to? This is their home.
