Late Monday, President Trump fired off a series of tweets addressing the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico, where much of the island country of 3.4 million people is without water, food, and essential supplies.
“What’s out there is total devastation. Total annihilation. People literally gasping for air. I personally have taken people out and put them in ambulances because their generator has run out,” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz told ABC News.
Unfortunately, the president took it upon himself to blame Puerto Rico—an unincorporated territory of the United States, by the way—for their current state, pointing to infrastructure problems and the “billions of dollars owed to Wall Street.”
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Prior to the late-night Twitterstorm, President Trump had not addressed the dire situation in Puerto Rico since Saturday—though he had fired off 15 tweets during that time against NFL players choosing to exercise their First Amendment rights in kneeling during the National Anthem to protest systemic racism and police brutality against African-Americans.
On Tuesday night’s edition of Late Night, host Seth Meyers criticized President Trump for tweeting about Puerto Rico’s debts while the country—again, part of the United States—is suffering a humanitarian crisis.
“Hey! Don’t go after Puerto Rico for their financial problems now. Victims of tragedy aren’t looking for ‘real talk.’ You don’t start a eulogy by saying, ‘Well, the guy never exercised…’ And hey, weren’t you the guy who was going to put Americans before Wall Street? You couldn’t even do that in a tweet! People don’t have clean drinking water, and your first instinct is to tell them they owe money. What are you, some kind of shitty landlord?” asked Meyers.
“Oh, right. You were a shitty landlord,” he added.
It took President Trump until Tuesday afternoon—a full week after the hurricane made landfall—to tweet that food and water were on the way to Puerto Rico, which was still recovering from Hurricane Irma when Maria hit.
“Hey, thank god you didn’t go to Vietnam. I can see it now: ‘Trump, I’m hit! Get the medic!’ ‘You still owe me twenty dollars,’” joked Meyers, referencing how Trump dodged the Vietnam draft with five deferments. “And hey, it took you a full week before you even sent someone to check out the situation. For someone with such a crooked little boner for first responders, you sure are the last responder.”
Meyers concluded: “You wanted to ‘Make America Great Again,’ so I’ll say it again: Puerto Rico is America. They’re included in the whole ‘Make America Great Again’ thing.”
