Yesterday, Rick Scott failed to come up with even one way he’d have done things differently than the Trump Administration in their response to Hurricane Maria. So we took the liberty of compiling just a few of the things disastrously executed by Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the storm.
- Trump called Puerto Rico “an island surrounded by water, big water, ocean water.”
- He also said, “this is a thing called the Atlantic Ocean, this is tough stuff.”
- And Energy Secretary Rick Perry called Puerto Rico a “country.” (It’s not.)
- Trump infamously threw paper towels into the crowd at a relief shelter like Oprah during a TV special.
- …And defended his action by saying, “I was having fun, they were having fun.”
- Trump “lashed out“ at San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz for criticizing his administration’s response.
- And just weeks after the storm, he threatened to pull federal relief workers out of Puerto Rico, tweeting, “We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!”
- The Trump Administration deployed a hospital ship to Puerto Rico…that filled just 6 of 250 available beds per day.
- Meanwhile, FEMA spent $75 million to dock a half-empty cruise ship off Puerto Rico for 4 months.
- FEMA approved only 28% of hurricane relief applications in the two and a half months after the Hurricane.
- The agency also awarded a $156 million contract to a caterer who delivered only 50,000 of the 30 million meals requested.
- And nearly nine months after the storm, the recovery in Puerto Rico has all but disappeared from the administration’s talking points.
- According to a Politico investigation, “the Trump administration exerted a faster, and initially greater, effort in Texas, even though the damage in Puerto Rico exceeded that in Houston.”
- It took FEMA 43 days to approve permanent disaster relief for Puerto Rico, compared to just 10 for Texas after Hurricane Harvey.
- Trump was “focused less on the details of the relief effort than on public appearances.”
Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation wasn’t just embarrassing — it left thousands of Americans dead, and thousands more still without shelter or power. And this list is just a slice of the administration’s many failures. So that leaves us wondering — where exactly did Rick Scott come up with his vision of Trump’s flawless recovery effort?
In case you missed it, watch Rick Scott’s “I don’t know what I’d do differently” here.
Published: Jun 1, 2018