WASHINGTON
— President Trump suggested again on Thursday that Puerto Rico bore
some of the blame for its current crisis following twin hurricanes, and
that there were limits to how long he would keep troops and federal
emergency workers on the island to help.
Mr.
Trump, who has been criticized for a slow and not always empathetic
response to the storms that ravaged the United States territory, sounded
off in a series of early-morning tweets. Angry about the criticism, he
has sought to refocus blame to where he believes it belongs — the
leadership of the island itself, which in his view mismanaged its
affairs long before the winds blew apart its infrastructure.
“‘Puerto Rico survived the Hurricanes, now a financial crisis looms largely of their own making.’ says Sharyl Attkisson,” he wrote, citing the host of a public affairs show
on Sinclair Broadcast Group television stations. “A total lack of
accountability say the Governor. Electric and all infrastructure was
disaster before hurricanes. Congress to decide how much to spend. We
cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been
amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!”
Puerto
Rico was already facing deep financial troubles before Hurricanes Irma
and Maria swept across the island, knocking out many basic services. As
of earlier this week,
nearly three weeks after Maria hit, 84 percent of the island remained
without electricity, two-thirds of cellphone towers were down, only 392
miles of the 5,073 miles of roads were open and about 6,000 people were
still in shelters.
Mr.
Trump has alternately praised the federal response and expressed
frustration that so much has been required. Unlike after hurricanes
struck Texas and Florida, he has complained that Puerto Rico was ruining
the federal budget, and he mounted a caustic attack on the mayor of San Juan, the capital, when she complained that the island needed more help.
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Puerto
Rico, which was struggling with a debt crisis before the storms hit,
may run out of money by the end of the month, and Mr. Trump on Tuesday
asked Congress for a $4.9 billion loan to help pay its most pressing
obligations amid warnings that it would not be able to pay teachers and
health care providers. That comes after Mr. Trump already requested $29 billion for storm recovery efforts.
The
president’s expression of impatience with the length of the recovery
effort, now just three weeks old, stood in contrast to the federal
investment after prior storms. A former official in the George W. Bush
administration noted that the federal government kept at least some
military in New Orleans for nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina hit in
2005 and that the government took more than five years for recovery
efforts over all.
“It’s
fairly typical for FEMA, D.H.S. and other executive agencies to be on
the ground running recovery operations for years to come,” said James
Norton, the former official, who worked at the Department of Homeland
Security under Mr. Bush. “I would expect them to be operating in Texas
and Florida for the next couple of years.”
Critics of the president said he had been stingy in his public comments about Puerto Rico compared with Texas or Florida.
“There
is this view that, somehow, we don’t merit that level of concern or
attention or respect from this government,” Melissa Mark-Viverito, the
speaker of the New York City Council, said even before
the Thursday morning tweets. “Somehow, we’re a burden and we’re
mooching. That’s the kind of language this president is throwing
around.”
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