President Donald Trump tore into Puerto Rico through a series of tweets Saturday morning, complaining just days before he is to head to the U.S. island territory that it wants "everything to be done for them" and calling the mayor of San Juan "nasty" after she criticized his administration's response to the disaster.
Later Saturday morning, he accused both CNN and NBC of using "fake news" to slam his administration's response to the Puerto Rican crisis:
Trump's first set of tweets were aimed, in particular, at San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, a member of the island's Popular Democratic Party, after she slammed Homeland Security Elaine Duke's comments that the administration's response to Puerto Rico, which was hit hard by Hurricane Irma and then devastated in a head-on hit by Hurricane Maria, as being a "good news story."
"Damn it, this is not a good news story," Cruz told CNN "New Day" co-anchor Alisyn Camerota, after she was played a recording of comments Duke had made on Thursday. "This is a people are dying story. This is a life-or-death story."
Later on Friday, the mayor held a press conference to criticize the Trump administration's efforts, reports The Hill.
"I will do what I never thought I was going to do. I am begging, begging anyone who 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," she said.
She spoke with CNN's Anderson Cooper Friday night, while wearing a shirt saying "help us, we are dying."
On Friday, Trump told reporters at the White House the government is doing an "incredible job" in Puerto Rico, and that people in the island territory are not able to get involved as "they're taking care of their families...therefore, we're forced to bring in truck drivers, security and many, many other personnel by the thousands. And we're bringing them onto the island as we speak. We've never seen a situation like this.”
Trump also retweeted items from the Coast Guard, the Air Force, and the Department of Defense showing relief efforts that are being made.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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