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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump's continued indolent response to Hurricane Maria is our worst fears about him come true
Almost 3,000 dead and he says, We did a fantastic job.
By Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com Aug 29, 2018, 4:30pm EDT
Speaking to reporters briefly at the White House, Donald Trump repeated the most consequential of the many lies of his presidency that the federal government did a fantastic job in its response to last years Hurricane Maria catastrophe that killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico.
Link to tweet
Thats a line that Trump has maintained ever since he made a belated visit to the island after two straight weekends golfing, followed by the observation that its been incredible the results that weve had with respect to loss of life.
In fact, the results they had with respect to the loss of life were awful. Awful in terms of the sheer number of dead, but also awful in terms of the reluctance from the very beginning to deliver an accurate death count. That the disaster turned out to be deadlier even than Hurricane Katrina is shocking, and the fact that it took the government until this week to finally acknowledge that fact is an entirely separate shock. And its a reminder that while Trumps time in office has shown that the macroeconomy can remain remarkably robust in the face of a president who has no idea what hes doing, there are other aspects of national affairs where this is not the case.
Trump is a president who cant even properly execute a relatively simple presidential task like leading the national mourning for the late Sen. John McCain in an appropriate way. Faced with something genuinely difficult like a strong hurricane hitting an island whose electrical infrastructure was already in rocky shape, he just totally failed with catastrophic consequences.
Trumps instinct from Day 1 has been to simply turn the islands devastation into another front in culture-war politics, a strategy that has helped keep his political career alive despite his lack of substantive command of the job.
more
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/29/17797466/trump-hurricane-maria-puerto-rico-response-death-toll
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Trump's continued indolent response to Hurricane Maria is our worst fears about him come true (Original Post)
DonViejo
Aug 2018
OP
GusBob
(7,286 posts)1. He lies with impunity, why not keep doing it?
No one ever holds him accountable.
if I lied so much in my work I would be fired
shraby
(21,946 posts)2. Maybe that many deaths was the goal, therefore they were successful and
did a great job.