Millions of people are preparing for Hurricane Florence to make landfall later this week. As they brace themselves for a storm with “potential for unbelievable damage,” Donald Trump is busy congratulating himself for the great job he thinks he did in response to Hurricane Maria. Apparently, Trump wants us to completely ignore that the death toll was just revised from 64 to almost 3,000—a figure which is likely way lower than the actual number of people who died. He also wants us to forget that there are still people in Puerto Rico without roofs, electricity and access to clean water an entire year after Maria. Instead, because he’s a raging narcissist, racist, and a bully, Donald Trump is saying we should ignore the facts because he’s responsible for an incredibly successful disaster response.
As The Washington Post reports, during a briefing about Hurricane Florence in the Oval Office, Trump said that his administration did a “fantastic job.” He then went on to say:
It was “one of the best jobs that’s ever been done with respect to what this is all about.”
Even FEMA has acknowledged that it screwed up its response to Hurricane Maria. In its official after-action report issued in July, the agency says that it failed to “properly respond”—citing a lack of experienced personnel and too few aid supplies on the ground. But Donald Trump doesn’t know that and he doesn’t care. Instead, he decided to go back to blaming Puerto Rico for all its woes and telling outright lies about the condition of the island before the storm.
Trump also said that Puerto Rico “had no electricity, essentially, before the storm. And when the storm hit, that took it out entirely.”
In case it wasn’t obvious before (and it should have been, because we’ve had decades worth of examples now), Donald Trump is a hateful, cruel, insensitive man who thinks that 3,000 people dying in Puerto Rico is perfectly fine as long as he can find a way to lie, pat himself on the back and tell the American people that he’s doing a great job. Mind you, he said all of these things on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks—a day in which thousands of people also died. A day that should be about reflection and remembering the victims of terrorism. He also said these things a week before the one year anniversary of Hurricane Maria on September 20.
As far as words of comfort and wisdom to the people currently in Hurricane Florence’s path, Trump made this incredibly astute observation about the storm, “[it will be] tremendously big and tremendously wet — tremendous amount of water.”
And there you have it. Delusions of grandeur, a complete lack of compassion, and bold-faced lies from the leader of the United States. There aren’t enough harsh words to properly describe this disgrace to democracy and humanity.