Grant the president this: Whatever shortcomings he might have as a national uniter, or soother of emotions, or chooser of Cabinet secretaries, he possesses a practically unerring ability to make anything about himself.
As the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico continues, Donald Trump has spent the weekend using his favorite medium, his Twitter account, not to soothe emotions or offer succor to the people of the island but to pick an increasingly acrimonious fight with the mayor San Juan, its largest city, and to tell Puerto Ricans that the lack of water, food, and electricity they are experiencing is not reality but a fabrication by the news media.
It started here:
The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
…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. They….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
…want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
Fake News CNN and NBC are going out of their way to disparage our great First Responders as a way to “get Trump.” Not fair to FR or effort!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
In what has become distressingly commonplace, he accused the press of sedition and undermining the military:
The Fake News Networks are working overtime in Puerto Rico doing their best to take the spirit away from our soldiers and first R’s. Shame!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
Later in the day he was at it again:
Results of recovery efforts will speak much louder than complaints by San Juan Mayor. Doing everything we can to help great people of PR!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
By Saturday morning, he was calling any critic an “ingrate”:
We have done a great job with the almost impossible situation in Puerto Rico. Outside of the Fake News or politically motivated ingrates,…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017
(In the midst of this, he again found time to scold NFL players who protest during the National Anthem and to demand credit for raising the numbers of his chosen candidate in the Alabama GOP Senate primary, even though the candidate lost. A participation trophy for the president, please!)
Within Trump’s worldview, this makes sense: If the alleged success of the relief effort a few days ago reflected Trump’s personal brilliance, then any criticism of the effort must represent a personal attack on the president. Outside of Trump’s worldview, however, this is not only illogical but inhumane: As American citizens in an American territory remain without basic necessities, the president of the United States seems primarily concerned about settling political scores and making it about him.
Retired Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, who won applause for turning around the chaotic Katrina relief effort 12 years ago, put Trump’s attacks on the San Juan mayor in clear contrast during a CNN interview Saturday.
Trump’s response this weekend is shocking (not to say surprising, as Fallows noted last weekend during a prior chapter in this crisis) not just because he is attacking public officials desperate to get aid for their people, but because his denunciation of press coverage verges on fantasy. Not for the first time, Trump seeks to deny the plain truth of news reports, but in this case there is no shortage of visual evidence to confirm the destruction. Even if he thinks he can fool mainlanders, Trump is also demanding that Puerto Ricans believe him, rather than their lying eyes:
To the people of Puerto Rico:
Do not believe the #FakeNews!#PRStrong🇵🇷— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
It’s hard to imagine this would convince a Puerto Rican whose house was destroyed, was going without medicine, or had no reliable drinking water, but since the country’s electrical grid is down and cellphone towers are destroyed, relatively few of them are likely to see the tweet anyway.
Anyone who does see his tweets, though, should treat them dubiously. Trump claimed Sunday morning that “all buildings [are] now inspected,” but Governor Ricardo Rosselló said he was unaware of any such inspections. Last week, as Trump said Puerto Ricans had plenty of water, Rosselló said only 40 percent of the population had reliable drinking water.
Trump’s attacks on Yulín are a turn in their relationship. On Tuesday, Trump tweeted to thank her for praising him. (His focus on who is praising him, as much or more than what is being done, underscores his unusual priorities.) But on Friday, after Duke called the relief effort “a good news story,” Yulín lost her patience during a live CNN interview.
“Dammit, this is not a good news story!” she said. “This is a people-are-dying story. This is a life-or-death story. This is a there’s-a truckload-of-stuff-that-cannot-be-taken-to-people story. This a story of a devastation that continues to worsen because people are not getting food and water.”
Even though the mayor had not mentioned Trump’s name, he took her remarks as a personal attack, and has spent much of the last 48 hours strafing her on Twitter. I wrote on Friday that Trump’s repeated mentions that Rosselló had thanked him constituted a form of blackmail—a reminder that should Rosselló’s praise cool, Trump could always turn the power of the state from aid into enemy. The president’s turn on Yulín proves that.
Trump is not the only federal official to bridle at Yulín’s remarks. On Fox News Sunday, FEMA Administrator Brock Long did not personally attack the mayor, but he did suggest she was not playing well with federal workers.
The sense of urgency didn’t begin to penetrate the White House until Monday, when images of the utter destruction and desperation—and criticism of the administration’s response—began to appear on television, one senior administration official said.
A common refrain through the serial crises first eight months of the presidency has been to wonder what would happen when Trump encountered a genuine crisis that was neither political nor of his own making. His first tests, with Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, went relatively smoothly. Maria does not look so promising. Trump’s impulse to personalize every incident and make it about him is jarring, but in one way, he is right: If the public deems the response to Maria a failure, no number of combative or self-exculpatory tweets will prevent him personally from receiving the blame.
“If mayors decide not to be a part of that, then the response is fragmented. And the bottom line is, is that we’re pushing everybody, we’re trying to push her, in there,” Long said. “You know, we can choose to look at what the mayor spouts off or what other people spout off, but we can also choose to see what’s actually being done, and that’s what I would ask.”
There are growing questions, however, about the president’s material handling of the effort, too. One reason the president is so furious at the press is surely a damning Washington Post story published Friday night that depicted Trump as disengaged and unaware. Though he spoke with Duke briefly about his travel ban the previous Friday, he was not in touch with her again until Tuesday. Instead, Trump spent the weekend playing golf and jousting with professional athletes via social media. Only later did he come to understand the scale of the disaster, and then only when he saw it on TV. As usual, it was personal criticism that really pricked Trump’s attention: