With a powerful hurricane bearing down on the Southeast coast, President Donald Trump on Tuesday turned attention back to the federal government\u2019s response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico a year ago, deeming it \u201cincredibly successful\u201d even though a recent federal report found that nearly 3,000 people died.<\/p>\n
The administration\u2019s efforts in Puerto Rico received widespread criticism. But after visiting the island last September, Trump said that Puerto Ricans were fortunate that the storm did not yield a catastrophe akin to the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast.<\/p>\n
All told, about 1,800 people died in that 2005 storm. Puerto Rico\u2019s governor last month raised the U.S. territory\u2019s official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975. The storm is also estimated to have caused $100 billion in damage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually think it was one of the best jobs that\u2019s ever been done with respect to what this is all about,\u201d Trump said Tuesday of the response in Puerto Rico, suggesting that it was made more difficult by the \u201cisland nature\u201d of the storm site.<\/p>\n
The president praised the response to the series of storms that battered the United States last year, saying, \u201cI think Puerto Rico was an incredible, unsung success. Texas, we\u2019ve been given A-pluses for. Florida, we\u2019ve been given A pluses for.\u201d<\/p>\n
The governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rossello, seized on Trump\u2019s use of the word \u201csuccessful\u201d and said in a statement issued later Tuesday: \u201cNo relationship between a colony and the federal government can ever be called `successful\u2019 because Puerto Ricans lack certain inalienable rights enjoyed by our fellow Americans in the states.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rossello called Hurricane Maria \u201cthe worst natural disaster in our modern history\u201d and said work still remained before they could move on to other stages of recovery. He also said he was still waiting for Trump to respond to a petition to help Puerto Rico complete work on emergency housing restoration programs and debris removal.<\/p>\n
Trump, having long struggled to express empathy at times of national crises, sparked outrage when during his visit to the island he feuded with the mayor of San Juan and passed out paper towels to victims like he was shooting baskets.<\/p>\n
While defending the handling of the previous storm, he urged caution in regards to the new one bearing down on North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe safety of American people is my absolute highest priority,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. \u201cWe are sparing no expense. We are totally prepared. We are ready. We are ready as anybody has ever been.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president, flanked by maps of the storm and the heads of the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Florence was unlikely to change course before it is expected to make landfall with 130 mph winds and potentially ruinous rains in the coming days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey haven\u2019t seen anything like what\u2019s coming at us in 25, 30 years, maybe ever,\u201d Trump said of the states in the storm\u2019s path.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With a powerful hurricane bearing down on the Southeast coast, President Donald Trump on Tuesday turned attention back to the federal government\u2019s response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico a year ago, deeming it \u201cincredibly successful\u201d even though a recent federal report found that nearly 3,000 people died. The administration\u2019s efforts in Puerto Rico received […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41918,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41916\/revisions\/41918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}