Trump actually treats Puerto Rico like garbage
The disastrous "joke" was more than that.
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âNobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than I doâ Donald Trump blathered at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, earlier this week.
Trump was trying to defuse remarks made at his Madison Square Garden donât-call-it-a-Nazi-rally by bigoted shock jock comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who got up on his hind legs and called Puerto Rico âan island of garbageâ. (There was no discernible punch line.)
Hinchcliffeâs disgusting statement about Puerto Rico broke through in mainstream media in a way that other equally hateful statements from the Trump campaign (even other hateful statements at the MSG event) have not. Thatâs in part because the Puerto Rican community, on the island and off, pushed back forcefully. Following Hinchcliffeâs set, Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, and Ricky Martin all endorsed Kamala Harrisâs pro-Puerto Rican message and shared it with their combined 314 million Instagram followers.
As the blowback intensified, Trump distanced itself from Hinchcliffe in a pro forma way; the campaign issued a bland statement saying, âthis joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.â During his bizarre garbage man stunt on Wednesday, Trump also said he didnât know Hinchcliffe â a typically irrelevant, cowardly response. (Watch below.)
Predictably, that was not enough for Archbishop Roberto GonzĂĄlez of San Juan, who issued a statement asking Trump to apologize personally. Reggaeton star Nicky Jam also withdrew his endorsement of Trump.
âPuerto Rico should be respected,â he said.
While Trump may now claim "I've done more for Puerto Rico than any president by far,â the fact of the matter is he has a record of treating the territory like, well, garbage. Trumpâs first presidency was actually a disaster for Puerto Rico and Hinchcliffeâs comments werenât an accident. They accurately reflect how Trump thinks about the island and the American citizens who live there.
Hurricane Maria
On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria, a category 4 and possibly category 5 storm, made landfall in Puerto Rico. The results were catastrophic. The hurricane dropped 15 to 30 inches of rain. At least 30 rivers on the island flooded. Wind speeds couldnât be recorded because all the wind sensors on the island were destroyed, but estimates suggest they were at least 133 miles per hour.
Cell phone communication was impossible, because 95 percent of cell towers were damaged. Virtually all road signs and traffic lights were destroyed. A month after the hurricane, only 8 percent of the islandâs roads were open. Five months afterwards, a quarter of Puerto Ricoâs residents did not have electricity. Three years later, thousands were still homeless because of the storm. Damage was estimated at $90 billion. There was no official death toll, but experts estimate at least 4,600 people died.
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This nightmarish tragedy was exacerbated by the fact that the Trump administration failed to provide timely aid. An inspector generalâs report in 2021 concluded that under Trump, the government delayed $20 billion in hurricane relief aid for months.
The reason for the delay is still not entirely clear, but broadly it appears that the executive branch imposed a series of needless bureaucratic hurdles to providing assistance. The Office of Management and Budget demanded an interagency review before approval, which had never been instituted before when disaster relief was at issue. The 2018-2019 government shutdown also slowed action.
It's always difficult to get the government to move quickly and efficiently. But part of the job of the president is to set priorities during a crisis and make sure the executive branch leaps into action when leaping is needed. Trump has little concern for the suffering of American people, though â especially when the people in question arenât able to vote for him even if they wanted to.
Officials and people on the island criticized the slow administration response. And, inevitably, Trump responded to criticism not by trying to help people in need, but by attacking.
Trump insults Puerto Rico (the first time)
In the aftermath of the Hurricane, San Juanâs mayor, Carmen YulĂn Cruz, issued a desperate plea for aid.
âI am begging you. Begging anyone that can hear us to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening, we are dying. And you are killing us with the inefficiency,â she said.
Trump responded by saying Cruz was ânastyâ (his go-to insult for women who question him). He added that Puerto Rico officials showed âpoor leadership abilityâ and sneered that they âwant everything to be done for them.â In other tweets, he suggested that hurricane damage was caused by Puerto Ricoâs âpoor infrastructureâ and âmassive debtâ and said that those faulting the relief effort were âpolitically motivated ingrates.â
To highlight the success of his (bungled, inadequate, unsuccessful) relief efforts, Trump traveled to Puerto Rico in early October, where he visited a church to oversee aid distribution and infamously tossed paper towels into the crowd. He also repeatedly applauded his own administration for keeping the death toll low; at the time only 16 deaths had been confirmed. But even in the early days, it was clear that the toll would be much higher. Trump simply didnât care.
Trump awarded himself an âA+â and said, âwe only heard thank yous from the people of Puerto Rico.â
Trump wanted to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland
Trumpâs trips to Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria did not lead him to feel empathy for the people or appreciation for the island. On the contrary, according to former DHS official Miles Taylor, Trump after his visit called the island âdirty.â He then asked if it could be traded.
Trump apparently had long had the preposterous idea of acquiring the Danish territory of Greenland and at various points suggested somehow exchanging it for Puerto Rico. Journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glaser reported that Trump told them, âI love maps. And I always said: âLook at the size of this. Itâs massive. That should be part of the United States.ââ (On the most popular map projection, the Mercator Projection, Greenland looks much bigger than it is. Most children learn this in elementary school.)
John Bolton, Trumpâs National Security Advisor, actually formed a team to consider possible paths to acquiring Greenland in order to oppose Chinese influence in the Arctic. Nothing came of any of this because the whole thing is ridiculous. Trump wants Greenland because he doesnât know how maps work. And (less amusingly) he wants to get rid of Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico is home to people who arenât white, and Trump is a racist who thinks non-white people are âdirty.â
Trump will harm Puerto Ricans, and all Americans
Trumpâs history with Puerto Rico is one of comingled incompetence, ignorance, contempt, racism, and bullying. He neglected the island when it faced a major crisis, and then became enraged when people in desperate need pointed out that he was not helping. He feels he is entitled to praise and abasement, especially from people who arenât white, and when he doesnât receive sufficient deference, he lashes out in vicious and grotesque ways.
Tellingly, instead of denouncing Hinchcliffeâs joke, Trumpâs response to the MSG debacle was to hold a staged roundtable event in Pennsylvania where a Puerto Rican slathered him with praise, saying, âPuerto Rico stands behind you, and Puerto Rico loves you.â (Watch below.)
This is characteristic of the way Trump handles everything. His failures with Hurricane Maria foreshadowed his failures with the covid pandemic. His inability to understand maps echoes his (more consequential) inability to understand his own tariff proposals. His casual, bone-deep racism has been a core of his political identity ever since he entered public life.
Hinchcliffeâs joke, and Trumpâs response, reminded Puerto Ricans that Trump hates them. But he doesnât just hate Puerto Ricans. He hates all of us. If you donât flatter Trump and end up needing anything from him, he will throw paper towels at you, then turn on you like a rabid dog. Puerto Ricans, and all Americans, deserve better.
Thatâs it for this week
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Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.
Trumpâs desperate scramble to divert attention from his MSG Nazifest, and his cos play as garbage man, canât disguise his âvisionâ of America as whites (and males) only: Everyone else is subhuman ⌠unless they swear obeisance.
Well said, Noah. The treatment of P.R. after Hurricane Maria was peak racism, peak callousness.