I didn’t think it possible for me to dislike Trump more than I already did. To me, he represents all that is loathsome in human nature. But my disgust grew even stronger when I read his remarks about San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz this morning.
The San Juan mayor has been pleading for help from the federal bureaucracy. She complains that red tape is snagging the Puerto Rican relief efforts so that even though food, water and medical supplies are piling up at the port, no help is getting to those who need it.
“We are dying,” she says. “This is a matter of life and death.”
Of course billionaire Trump doesn’t know what the mayor is talking about. I am sure he has never been hungry in his life (see how fat he is).
So he takes the mayor’s pleas as personal criticism. And he responds as usual by lashing out at her on Twitter.
“The mayor of San Juan, who was complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump,” he declared. “Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help.”
So the Puerto Rican disaster is fake news dreamed up by Democrats, is it?
If you believe that, you will also believe that Puerto Rico is “in the middle of an ocean,” as Trump said recently.
(Of course, you and I, having studied geography at school, know the island is partly in the Caribbean Sea and only partly in the Atlantic Ocean. But Trump can’t be bothered with facts. He makes stuff up.)
Obviously, the Puerto Rican relief effort faces logistical challenges. It takes time to get supplies to the island. It takes resourcefulness to improvise ways of transporting the supplies when roads and bridges are impassable, the electrical grid is down and the phones don’t work.
But that doesn’t make the San Juan mayor’s plea less valid.
Human lives are at stake here. Hospitals are without power and patients are dying. Babies have no formula. Thousands have no drinking water. People are actually starving.
This is no time for bureaucratic dithering. This is a time for action. Urgent action.
If Trump possessed even a shred of humanity, he would personally step in this weekend – instead of tweeting insults and playing golf.- to clear away the bureaucratic morass in Puerto Rico so that hurricane victims can get the help they need.
