Campaign Action
This announcement comes just hours after Donald Trump sent out a series of tweets appearing to blame Puerto Rico for its problems following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. Trump’s visit will come nearly two weeks after Maria hit the island, where more than three million U.S. citizens may go up to six months without electricity:
President Trump will travel to Puerto Rico next Tuesday to survey damage from Hurricane Maria, which has ravaged the island and left Americans there without power and struggling to find food and clean water.
As Mark Sumner noted, leaders on the island have been begging for relief, because what has actually gotten there has been woefully inadequate. “Donald Trump could have ordered the armed forces to conduct an emergency air evacuation of the island, moving hundreds of thousands of the most directly threatened to safety. He didn’t.”
The people of Puerto Rico are suffering, and it took days of public shaming for someone in the White House to finally schedule a visit as Trump has made his racist attacks on athletes his main priority on Twitter. It’s safe to assume many Americans in Puerto Rico would much rather see an Air Force One full of supplies and food rather than one full of Trumps.