When Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico Tuesday to survey the damage done by Hurricanes Maria and Irma, he opted not to visit the areas that had been hit hardest, where electricity, water, and food are still in terribly short supply. It was a “Tale of two Puerto Ricos,” writes the Washington Post.
The Puerto Rico that President Trump saw during his four-hour visit on Tuesday afternoon was that of Angel Pérez Otero, the mayor of Guaynabo, a wealthy San Juan suburb known for its amenity-driven gated communities that was largely spared when Hurricane Maria hit nearly two weeks ago. [...]
Meanwhile, in nearby Caguas, Miranda Torres was trying to make up for lost time. In the 48 hours after the hurricane, communication was impossible. Since then, he has lost count of how many times he traveled to San Juan to tell the central government what his people needed: food, water and generators. But it took more than a week for a trickle of supplies to reach the town. [...]
For days, the shelters had no generators. The hospitals were without water. And the help wasn’t coming quickly enough because the roads were covered in mud and debris.
It's little wonder that the mayor of Guaynabo, Pérez Otero, was included in Trump's press conference of cheerleaders during his visit.
“Your people are doing the right stuff for us,” Pérez Otero told Trump on Tuesday.
As one might expect, instead of visiting a shelter in Caguas, Trump opted for an evangelical church located in Guaynabo, Cavalry Chapel, where he famously delivered supplies that didn't seem all that needed with the soft touch of a basketball player working on his free-throw form.
But when a church member explained how the life-saving water purification kits they were distributing worked, Trump cringed and questioned her sincerity.
“Wait,” Trump said, “you put it in dirty water?”
“And then you can drink it after 10 to 12 hours,” she explained.
“Would you do it? Would you drink it?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“Really?” Trump said, a disgusted look coming across his face.
“Really,” she said.
“Is this your company or something?” Trump asked the woman, seeming suspicious of the aggressive pitch.
“No,” she said, “I’m part of the church.”
Turns out she wasn't just a shill trying to make money off someone else's tragedy—imagine that.
Overall, Trump's performance didn't go over well with the locals, writes Mother Jones.
Another woman, who didn’t want to reveal her name, asked, “What can you expect from Trump?” She says she saw part of the livestream video of the president’s meeting with Puerto Rican officials but “stopped because of the disrespect.”
ABC News took a more realistic look at how many Puerto Rican residents are faring and it isn't pretty. Lizbeth Vasquez Delgado, a New Yorker who went to San Juan to care for her parents, talked about dividing up a single piece of bread so her parents' neighbors could all have a little bit.
Nearly two weeks after the hurricane hit, the residents of the building are still without power and running water.
Even though President Donald Trump tweeted days ago that all buildings have been inspected, Vasquez told ABC News' David Muir that she had not yet seen inspectors at her parents' fourth-floor apartment or in the building.
"They have not come to see what's happened to these apartments," she said. "No one has come."
Vasquez said no food or water had been brought to the building. Inside the tiny apartment, the windows have been blown out by the hurricane. Down the hall, outside the apartment, the destruction can be seen outside from a window. An entire doorway has been blown over by the strong winds. [...]
"I had a piece of bread, half of bread, and I shared it with like four apartments. I made sure everybody had a little piece of bread for them to eat," Vasquez said.
No wonder the San Juan mayor has been begging for someone—anyone—to save their lives, while Trump trotted around a relatively ritzy suburb telling people to "have a good time."
And no wonder Puerto Ricans who are able to get off the island are still pouring into Florida by the thousands. The Los Angeles Times writes:
Sitting on a bench away from the crowds as she waited for a car to whisk her to Orlando, Vilma Blanco, an 85-year-old resident of old San Juan, was happy to be with family, but overwhelmed.
“The problem is, I didn’t want to leave,” Blanco said. “My son made me. We had no water, no electricity, no food. He said we would be better off leaving.”
Blanco, who has a heart condition, had bruises on her face and was having difficulty walking after having taken a fall on the cruise ship. She had not traveled in more than a decade. At her age, she said, she’d never imagined she would travel again.
Trump followed up his Tuesday visit to Puerto Rico with one on Wednesday to Las Vegas, where he delivered a somber speech entirely from the text on the podium before him. God forbid his handlers leave him to his own devices.