Bob CollinsOnce again the liberal media elite take cheap shots at a president who has the good sense to blame the victims of a hurricane for losing everything they had in a hurricane. Sad.
“They … want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort,” said the president who’s getting his information about what’s happening on the island from… who, exactly?
Over to you, Twitter.
"They want everything to be done for them." pic.twitter.com/SsrVvH6l9s
— Jess Dweck (@TheDweck) September 30, 2017
In a subseqent tweet, the president played the “why do you hate our soldiers?” card.
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
In its editorial today, the Washington Post reports that among those most critical of the federal government response, is the military general who cleaned up the the incompetent response during Hurricane Katrina.
Officials involved in past disaster responses were critical of the lack of urgency in the Puerto Rico response. Russel L. Honoré, the retired lieutenant general eventually appointed by Mr. Bush to improve the government’s efforts after Hurricane Katrina, told the New York Times, “They need to scale up.” Most telling was the comparison by Post reporters of the Puerto Rico response to the U.S. effort undertaken in 2010 when an earthquake hit Haiti. Within two days of Haiti’s earthquake, there were 8,000 American troops en route to the island; eight days after Hurricane Maria, just 4,400 service members were participating in efforts in Puerto Rico.
Different disasters present different problems, and there is no minimizing the logistical challenges that hard-working rescue workers and beleaguered local officials face in trying to get Puerto Rico back on its feet in this humanitarian crisis. Whether they succeed will depend in large part on the help they get from the White House, not on its misguided spin.
