Donald Trump landed at San Juan, Puerto Rico on Tuesday, where he immediately headed up the most critical operation on the island—praising Donald Trump. In a round-robin meeting reminiscent of Trump’s summer cabinet session butt-kiss-a-thon, Trump prompted arranged people, gave himself an “A plus” for hurricane operations in both Texas and Florida, the proceeded to force people to say, in their own words, how great he is.
With the Mayor of San Juan sitting to his side, Trump pointedly ignored her. Instead he turned to Puerto Rico’s sole Representative, Jenniffer González, and asked he to repeat compliments he claimed she’d made earlier. And he praised the governor of Puerto Rico for praising Trump.
“Right from the beginning, this governor did not play politics. He didn’t play it at all. He was saying it like it was.”
Like the emcee at a Kiwanis Club picnic, Trump went around the room asking each person to add their own slab of praise—including making a bizarre sidetrip into the cost of the F-35 fighter, during which Trump repeated his (false) claims.
“As you've probably heard, we cut the price very substantially. Something that no other administration could have done, that I can tell you.”
It wasn’t all pure tell-me-how-much-you-love-me. Trump did let the governor know that the disaster was causing a serious accounting issue.
"I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack. Because we spent a lot of money in Puerto Rico.”
Trump also pointed out that he’d clearly done a better job than Bush did with Katrina, because fewer people died. So there.
“Sixteen people versus in the thousands. You can be very proud of all of your people and all of our people working together. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people.”
And that was despite the fact that Hurricane Maria was …
"A Category 5, which few people have ever even heard of.”
Trump will travel from San Juan to … San Juan. Where he will then look at pictures of the rest of Puerto Rico. Maybe those pictures will be of people on their roofs holding up signs to say how much they love Trump.