The Mess in Puerto Rico. No power on the whole island for 4-6 mos.

Oh, he's not going to meet with her, he'd be too scared to confront someone like that directly.

 

Doesn't seem like it, in that situation he worked to get the aid to people that needed it in an illegal manner, in this instance it's just local leaders grandstanding to reporters, or rather that's what it seems like. If they had done their job and worked out the logistics of getting the supplies off the ships and to the people that needed it instead of wasting time talking to news networks, those on the ground there would be better off. Honestly with that kind of failure going on, they should be too damn busy to be talking to reporters.

 

If the situation were dire enough, any Mayor would do this. Seems to me that there is a lot of rush-to-judgment about what this Mayor is doing without actually having seen what she is or isn't doing. At the same time, we do have to give President Trump credit for lifting the Jones Act.

There is probably a solution in between. The problem is that the Mayor of SJ is criticizing an entity (fed govt) and the President is attacking a person. This is what happens when you are incredibly thin-skinned, unfortunately.

 

Bobby, I think what you're doing is voicing an opinion on something for which you don't have all the facts. My only criticism is that President Trump shouldn't be making a personal attack on a Mayor in a place that is completely devastated. And I have the facts for that - it's called "out of Trump's own mouth." This is what makes it easy for us to criticize Trump- he directly supplies us with factual evidence.

 

Good thread.

 

I think the issue here is that no one really has "all the facts", and what I'm saying is based on pictures and video I've seen of tons of supplies that were sent to PR that are still in their crates and have not been shipped inland where they are needed.

Do we really know who is to blame? No, what we know is that this random mayor is trying to find any reporter that will listen to her in order to blame the problems on other people and Trump has blamed the problems on the locals in PR.

It could potentially be either one of them that is right, but we have a history of incompetent mayors pulling the same BS, so that's what my money is on.

 

Yes, but during that time, we actually had competent Presidents in the White House (bazinga!)

J/K... well, maybe. It's just sad that no one taught Trump how to communicate properly. I mean, when you're living in the White House and haven't even set foot in PR, and you're insulting the Mayor vs. just defending your govt's actions? Extremely cringe-worthy.

It's my fault for expecting more from my President. I was spoiled by 225+ years of history in this respect.

 

And as usual, there is a past Trump tweet for everything...

 

Hopefully, things get better for the people of Puerto Rico, and everyone can work together as best they can.

And that we, on this board, can disagree without using personal insults

(this is my kumbaya, "do as I say not as I've often done" moment).

For Correa, and Beltran, and Centeno, "oraciones para sus familias".

 

I think we've had evidence of how previous hurricane disasters have been handled by this administration that suggests that the random mayor is probably just grandstanding.....especially when we see evidence that tons of relief supplies actually made it to the island.

Basically it's much more likely that the leaders in PR are incompetent than it is that the government didn't send the relief. That said, I get that if you are a partisan liberal, you'll look for any excuse to blame Trump for anything you can.

Again, we're talking about a Caribbean island with such incompetent leadership that they could have had their vital infrastructure completely destroyed by a threat they can face literally every year. If we were talking about Haiti or some garbage heap like that, it would make sense, but i think we can admit that PR should have been better prepared.

In some ways, this could end up being a good thing as it'll force PR to do things they should have done decades ago in building an infrastructure that won't be completely destroyed when they face issues like this again.....and they will. Also perhaps this will lead to better disaster planning in the future.

Either way, trying to blame this all on Trump is pretty lame.

 

The Mayor of Puerto Rico hasn't said anything different about the lack of resources than General Buchanan who was appointed by the Trump administration.

 

Of course the Trump fans came full force in support of Trump attacking the mayor of a devastated city with no power and flooded in sewage water and making a race baiting remark about "expecting everything to be done for them".

It makes me sad these garbage human beings apparently root for the Houston Rockets. Not sure how you guys can look at yourself in the mirror but whatever makes you feel good about your pathetic small little worlds. Being a conservative is one thing but being unable to stomach one ounce of humanity is another. Truly disgusting people here.

 

He was special forces doing counter terrorism and counter insurgency stuff. Logistics for supplies to 3rd world places is his wheelhouse. You've seen moving pictures on the tv though....


Even your logic is moronic. So the federal government shipped millions of goods to Puerto Rico but then c ouldnt deliver them to citizens because they forgot to use their military equipment to do so? Or why is it exactly that you think the federal government is not doing what you suggest?

 

Sir, you are not getting it- I do not doubt that the federal government has helped- which has been acknowledged- but not enough has been done.

Bobby, you can plan to the hills all you want- 2 hurricanes is going to destroy whatever you have done. Shoot, we didn't even have a hurricane hit us, technically, and look how bad off parts of Houston are.

And your primary response to a devastating crisis, in which people are seriously in a bad situation, even life-or-death, is to wag your finger at them? I mean, I am not calling you names like others on here, but your tone-deaf response really opens it up for people to call you heartless and have a valid point.

This doesn't give the whole story, but here's part of it, anyway:


The storm


Hurricane Maria flooded roads, destroyed phone lines and Internet connections, and cut the island’s overseas lifeline to the mainland from which it gets so many of its goods.

With no way to communicate and almost no help from the outside world, the mayors of Puerto Rico became, in the days after the hurricane, the highest form of authority many residents knew.

Cruz worked nearly nonstop on the ground in San Juan — walking its streets and doing what she could for those she met. She described what she had seen to the The Washington Post three days after the storm.

“There is horror in the streets,” she said then. “Sheer pain in people’s eyes.”

The city’s hospitals were likely to spend weeks without power, she said, and the rest of the country would not have electricity until 2018. Looters were already taking over some streets after dark.

“We’re running out of gasoline,” Cruz said. “There is no reservoir of drinking water — none.”

She had written to scores of other mayors, she said: “There’s no answer.”

The mayor herself felt relatively helpless — only able to do so much for her exhausted neighbors and frightened constituents.

“I know we’re not going to get to everybody in time,” she said. But she would try.

On her way to the interview, she said, a man asked her for a favor: “To tell the world we’re here.”

As tears filled her eyes, Cruz obliged.

“If anyone can hear us,” she told the reporter, “help.”

A week later, signs hung in basketball courts of Old San Juan: “SOS.” “Don’t abandon us.”

As darkness fell Thursday, families searched for water by the light of the moon and cellphones with dwindling batteries. They passed through a tunnel beneath a city wall and found at its exit a water tank left there by the city — a godsend.

And then they found their mayor.

Cruz hugged them as they came to her. She handed to each family a small solar-powered lantern — “a box of blessings,” she called it.

“Now this is life,” she told The Post.

Her people were resilient, she said. Residents had taken the streets back from criminal gangs.

But if the federal government didn’t step up its response, she feared, “people will die.”

A call with the White House earlier in the week had encouraged her, she said. She told the federal government that 3,000 containers were sitting in a port, trapped behind electronic gates that wouldn’t open.

Since then, more federal personnel had arrived, and the government had sent pallets of water and food.

But her city was still on the brink, Cruz said, and she feared her people could become desperate.

“The FEMA people have their hearts in the right place,” she said, but “there is a bottleneck somewhere.”



The president


The same day, in the White House driveway, acting homeland security secretary Elaine Duke defended the Trump administration’s response to the storm.

“It is really a good news story, in terms of our ability to reach people,” the director said.

And when Cruz heard that, she made good on her warning years earlier — that sometimes in politics, “you can’t play nice.”

“People are dying in this country,” Cruz said at a news conference Friday. “I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying and you are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy.”

And with that, the mayor of a ruined city merited a mention in Trump’s Twitter feed.

“The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump,” he wrote.

 

I'm pretty sure Rockets owner voted for Trump.

 

Can some that are complaining about the response explain why this is unacceptable. Cometswin is obviously wrong about '9 days'. This says 10k employees, 1 million meals, and 1 million liters of water within 3 days.