BLOG: WE KNOW HOW FAST THE WHITE HOUSE CAN HAND CRONY BANKSTERS BILLIONS IN NO-STRINGS, NO INTEREST LOANS!!!
"Trump previously denounced Puerto Rican residents for the massive debt owed to the Wall Street banks, which is the result of the island’s colonial legacy, a decades-long economic recession and wholesale looting by financial speculators who control Puerto Rican debt."
Trump’s photo-op
in Puerto Rico
By Rafael
Azul
4 October 2017
Two weeks after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, leaving
millions without electricity, water and other basic necessities, US President
Donald Trump did a quick fly-in and fly-out Tuesday to pronounce what a
wonderful job his administration has done to address the crisis.
Trump’s entourage included his wife Melania, some cabinet members,
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Jenniffer González, chairwoman of the
Puerto Rico Republican Party and the island’s nonvoting member of the US House
of Representative.
The president’s handlers made sure that Trump—who clearly did not
want to be there—appeared in public as little as possible to prevent any
opportunity for public protest. After a little more than four hours, the
president flew off, an hour ahead of schedule.
The people the president did speak to were preselected. He visited
an upscale neighborhood in Guaynabo, west of the capital city of San Juan,
which has been one of the fastest areas to have electricity, communication and
other services restored. At a local church, he threw rolls of paper towels out
to a crowd in the most demeaning fashion, later saying, “There’s a lot of love
in this room, a lot of love. Great people.”
During his press conference, however, Trump could hardly contain
his contempt for the population of the US territory. The recovery effort and
the current situation on the island, he claimed, was “really nothing short of a
miracle,” adding that it was nothing like the “real catastrophe” that occurred
during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Following the press conference, Trump
visited the Muñoz Rivera housing project in Guaynabo. One of the housing
project residents, Raúl Cardona, told Trump “he should visit the central parts
of the islands, where a lot of people have no food, no water, where a lot of
people have died. What he saw in Guaynabo was nothing compared to the rest of
the island,” Cardona told the El Nuevo Día newspaper
about his words with Trump.
Only four percent of the island’s 3.4 million residents have
power, more than half do not have clean water, and many residents are washing
in rivers. With temperatures in the 90s, the lack of air conditioning and
medical attention could lead to further fatalities, particularly among the
elderly and infirm. Roads are blocked with debris and standing water is
attracting mosquitos that can carry deadly diseases.
Thousands remain in shelters, gasoline is scarce, ATMs are out of
money, and many of the supplies sent to the island have been left on docks
because of the lack of diesel for trucks. Public schools, which suffered
devastating destruction, may not open for six months or more, officials have
said.
Trump repeated the official claim of 16 hurricane-related
fatalities. After the president left, Governor Ricardo Rosselló raised the
death toll to 34. The number of fatalities is expected to grow once rescuers
reach more isolated rural and mountainous areas.
Earlier in the morning, the island’s Secretary of Public Health
Héctor Pesquera announced there were more than 100 cadavers in hospitals around
the island, which are currently being examined to determine if they died as a
result of the hurricane, the most powerful storm to hit Puerto Rico in nearly a
century.
Governor Rosselló—the MIT-trained politician who was a Clinton
delegate during the Democratic Party convention last year—dutifully suppressed
this information during Trump’s visit. The president later praised Rosselló for
“not playing politics.”
Trump previously denounced Puerto Rican residents for the massive
debt owed to the Wall Street banks, which is the result of the island’s
colonial legacy, a decades-long economic recession and wholesale looting by
financial speculators who control Puerto Rican debt. Rosselló and his
predecessors have imposed savage austerity measures, and the island, which
declared bankruptcy last May, is currently under the dictatorship of a
financial oversight board imposed by the Obama administration.
During a press conference, Trump—who is proposing the largest tax
cut for corporations and the rich in history—complained that the recovery
effort was costing the US government too much money. “Now I hate to tell you,
Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack because we’ve
spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico. And that’s fine. We’ve saved a lot of lives.”
Rosselló, who has revised upward his government’s estimate of the
cost of rebuilding the island’s infrastructure to $90 billion, is seeking a
low-interest emergency line of credit as soon as possible, saying otherwise the
government will run out of public funds by next week.
BLOG: WE KNOW HOW FAST THE WHITE HOUSE CAN HAND CRONY BANKSTERS BILLIONS IN NO-STRINGS, NO INTEREST LOANS!!!
Trump has complained that Puerto Rican residents are not helping
themselves enough and are essentially expecting government handouts. Last week
he poured scorn via text message from his luxury golf course on local
officials, including the mayor of San Juan, for complaining about the slowness
of the administration’s response.
Shortly after Trump had left the island, US federal authorities
denied Puerto Rico’s petition that recipients of food stamps (which are used by
46 percent of the population) be allowed to purchase meals in fast-food
restaurants, given the scarcity of food in the island’s supermarkets.
TRUMP DEMANDS PUERTO RICO PAY THE BANKSTERS FIRST!
HOW MUCH DID SWAMP KEEPER TRUMPS HUNDREDS OF
BANKRUPTCIES COST HIS BANKSTERS???
BOOK:
…………………..TRAGIC!
THE DEATH GAP: INEQUALITY IS KILLING AMERICA!
CALL IT OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS OR TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE SUPER
RICH!
Video: Trump Meets the San Juan
Mayor Who Trashed Him
The Trump administration has handled the federal response to three consecutive devastating hurricanes quite well -- earning high marks in Texas and Florida, and pushing back against criticisms over Puerto Rico, many of which are either about personality disputes or are substantively unfair. Most objectionable was the president's unseemly war of words with the Mayor of San Juan. Sure, she appears to be a hardcore leftist and a bit of a grandstanding showboat who's given to overwrought hyperbole. But Trump and the White House would have been wiser to focus on the task at hand while leaving those criticisms to surrogates, allies, or even outside observers like this neighboring city's mayor:
The mayor of a Puerto Rican city that sits next to San Juan praised the administration's help Saturday night, and chided the "politics" of San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who has been criticizing President Trump. In an interview with Secrets, Guaynabo Mayor Angel Perez Otero said that in several meetings with FEMA and U.S. military officials about the recovery effort, Yulin Cruz has been absent. "I've seen other mayors participating. She's not," said Perez Otero...Asked if he has seen similar shortfalls and non-communication from the administration, Perez Otero said "that's not been my experience." He added, "There is a lot of politics in Puerto Rico."
Despite the bad blood, Trump praised Mayor Yulin Cruz in meetings with local residents on the island today:
"Your governor and your mayor have done, really, a fantastic job," Trump said while shaking hands with residents still stranded on the island.
His rave reviews of Puerto Rico's governor were even more adulatory, emphasizing the chief executive's eschewal of 'playing politics' throughout the crisis: "Your governor who I didn’t know, I heard very good things about him — he’s not even from my party, and he started right at the beginning appreciating what we did," Trump said. "He was tremendously supportive and he knew the level of problem that you had at the beginning before, and what happened with respect to the tremendous storms that hit your beautiful island...Governor, I just want to tell you that right from the beginning this governor did not play politics, he didn't play it at all. He was saying it like it was, and he was giving us the highest grades. On behalf of our country, I want to thank you." By going out of his way to mention the governor's lack of political posturing, Trump was implicitly criticizing Mayor Cruz, to whom he paid far less attention during today's events. NBC's Andrea Mitchell didn't seem too pleased with this treatment:
Mitchell is reaching here, especially given Trump's well-established reputation for rhetorically roughing up critics. Politely shaking Cruz's hand and saying nice things about her to Puerto Ricans during his tour is about as gracious and magnanimous as he gets toward someone who's been a loud thorn in his side. Trump may not deserve plaudits for not behaving like a boor, but he dialed back his usual modus operandi in this case, and appropriately so.
October 4, 2017
Trump gets the media's middle finger on Puerto Rico
We see the media intentionally take Trump out of context all the time, and his comments in Puerto Rico make for one of the most blatant instances. On CBS radio, they said he complained about Puerto Rico putting a hole in the budget and left out where he said that is fine.
Here is the actual quote.
Trump pledged an all-out effort to help the island but added: "Now I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack[.]" (This is where MSNBC cut off the quote. Trump goes on:) "Because we've spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico. And that's fine. We've saved a lot of lives."
Why would MSNBC and Rachel Maddow cut off the last part of the quote? The answer is obvious. She really doesn't want her listeners to see that he said that is fine.
Heading in the supposedly conservative Newsmax:
Trump in Devastated Puerto Rico: You've Thrown Budget 'Out of Whack'
Newsmax has been moving left for a long time. There is no reason at all that they couldn't have put and that is fine in their headline.
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