Discussion: San Juan Mayor To Trump Admin: 'Damnit, This Is Not A Good News Story'

I’ve been watching MSNBC this morning, and believe me when I say, everyone there’s is relentlessly reporting what’s going on in PR and are very critical of the slow response by the Trump administration. Trump probably isn’t watching that station, because he would have blown a gasket by now.

Right now they story is about “mixed messages” about the response. Faux news v facts on the ground, as it were.

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Puerto Rico citizens have twice voted to for statehood. Congress says no.

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Maybe she should be encouraged to move to FL… and make a run at Rubio.

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Sure. Today they are doing a good job of reporting. Why wasn’t there a laser focus on PR 9 days ago?

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So winning the news cycle

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A checklist of what we as a people should do in the face of shared danger, and in the past, with the exception of Katrina, have done: American citizens at risk. Threat looms, preparations made, if possible. Disaster actually strikes. Condolences, good wishes, offers of support immediately. Timely rescue/recovery completed. Essentials for survival assured, no matter what the cost. Then, and only then, when terror and despair are relieved by food and fellowship, talk about rebuilding (where rebuilding should occur and where it should not, what kinds of structures and infrastructure will be most appropriate given the conditions and anticipated threats) and how much that all will cost and be paid for. A scorecard by which to measure Trump. What I have read from him in his tweets: “Puerto Rico is deeply in debt to Wall Street bankers”, “Shipping industry doesn’t want waivers from the Jones Act”,“Big decisions will have to be made as to the cost of rebuilding”, “Wish press would treat fairly”. For him all about money with nothing but an empty heart for suffering fellow country men, women, and children. This is the best of what we get from him, along with so much worse. Do those who voted for Trump, who stand temporarily sheltered from the storm, really think they will be cared about and cared for in an emergency? What is your evidence?

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Who knows. Perhaps because people expected more action, and by the time they realized it wasn’t coming, the clock had been ticking. As the days passed, the anger grew and the coverage increased. Also, the death count so far has been pretty low, thankfully. Trump had better hope that doesn’t start to rise or there will be screaming.

Yikes, now they have the FEMA guy on the hot seat.

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I doubt it’ll ever happen due to Wall Street, hedge funds and vulture funds not wanting Puerto Rico to be able to use the tools of bankruptcy once a state. As a territory, it cannot file bankruptcy.
Obama appointed a Michigan style financial oversight board last year:

The oversight board was established last year, when Puerto Rico was sinking under $123 billion of public debt and pension obligations that it amassed by years of borrowing to plug deficits. The federal bankruptcy code bans Puerto Rico from declaring bankruptcy, and by 2016, it was defaulting haphazardly on payment after payment, without any way to take shelter from the many resulting creditor lawsuits.

Close to 74 billion in bond debt plus 48 billion in unfunded pension obligations. They will never pay it off. More on the oversight board:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/white-house-names-seven-to-puerto-rico-oversight-board/2016/08/31/9cee9376-6f8b-11e6-9705-23e51a2f424d_story.html?utm_term=.f6bf1b5296ea

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To get an deeper insight into Tramp’s sociopathy when it comes to the suffering of others, here is a story from the Howard Stern tapes, from the mouth of Tramp himself, entitled The Time Donald Trump Turned Away in Disgust While a Man Was Bleeding to Death in Front of Him. (link to Daily Beast) Here’s a snippet:

The most eye-opening story from the unearthed Stern-Trump interviews, however, came during a chat on July 16, 2008.

[this is a fundraiser for the Red Cross at Mar-a-lago] “So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away,” said Trump. “I couldn’t, you know, he was right in front of me and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him… he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible. You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red. And you have this poor guy, 80 years old, laying on the floor unconscious, and all the rich people are turning away. ‘Oh my God! This is terrible! This is disgusting!’ and you know, they’re turning away. Nobody wants to help the guy. His wife is screaming—she’s sitting right next to him, and she’s screaming.”

Thank God for the Marines. “What happens is, these 10 Marines from the back of the room… they come running forward, they grab him, they put the blood all over the place—it’s all over their uniforms—they’re taking it, they’re swiping [it], they ran him out, they created a stretcher. They call it a human stretcher, where they put their arms out with, like, five guys on each side,” shared Trump.

“I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ The next day, I forgot to call [the man] to say he’s OK,” said Trump, adding of the blood, “It’s just not my thing.”

I feel confident that people have interviewed serial killers on death row who have more compassion and empathy.

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I don’t know about everyone else but MSNBC has been talking about PR from day one, Though it did take a little while after the storm to pass to just get people/equipment down there to be even be able to have reports from the ground.

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I saw that cow from DHS make that statement, and I was stunned and disgusted. I have been watching the media coverage of this horror on MSNBC and not a day or show goes by that they have not have someone on the ground reporting on this disaster, including right through the storm. That the so-called president is talking about debt or doing a great job is just pathetic and coming from a chronic bankruptcy addict and germaphobe it is disgustingly hypocritical. Puerto Rico’s citizens are American citizens just like those in Florida or Texas and deserve the same kind of response as those states got. The same goes for the US Virgin Islands. But from a racist administration with absolutely no knowledge of history or geography, this response should have been anticipated. I wonder when people start finding whole towns dead from disease and starvation and dehydration, will those deaths be attributed by the media to this WH as they should be, or will the story have moved on to something as distracting as Trump and the NFL?

NOTE TO THE MEDIA: Stop being played. Trump is not a favorite or beloved TV character. He is a clear and present danger to the United States. Every time he wants to distract you from really vital and important news, he pulls some stunt, like the NFL tweets, and you give days of coverage to it, instead of focusing on things like heinous bills in front of Congress, relief efforts in places like Puerto Rico, the Russia investigation, or the corruption of this administration. Stop being led around by the nose by Trump and his TV roadshow. Give him only maybe 3-5 mins. for his outrages and tweets if you must cover him - but that is it. I find myself turning the channel now rather than watch stories on his stupidities after the first report and no longer will I listen to his stump speeches. Find the real stories and stop with his scripted hate and ignorance BS.

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And most of the financial issues are caused by legal cutouts Congress establishes specifically about Puerto Rico.

Congress did this. Congress sank millions of Americans into crushing civic debt without chance of relief. They did it knowingly, and now they’re staying silent while a humanitarian crisis plays out. Where’s the goddamned legislation mandating more federal assets be sent down there? Where’s the legislation mandating that PR’s food, fuel, and electrical needs be fully funded during the relief and reconstruction in order to promote the general welfare, as citizens are running out of money to buy what few supplies they can?

WHERE THE FUCK IS CONGRESS AND WHY ARE THEY NOT BEING PUT UNDER THE LIGHTS, TOO?

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Yes, the US created Puerto Rico’s economic bubble with a tax break. When the tax break was unwound for good in 2006, Puerto Rico entered a deep recession. They have been in one ever since.
ETA: We helped break it, we should fix it. Unfortunately, Trump is Wall Street’s man, he won’t help them. Hell, even Obama played to Wall Street’s interest regarding Puerto Rico.

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Here’s the thing. If Trump was a normal president, this would be exactly the correct response.

But the problem is that Trump has a such a profound case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder that people who deal with and write about the disorder almost cannot make themselves believe it’s not an act because no one ever has such a classic and extreme presentation. And that means that what she has really done is inflict a psychic wound on Trump roughly equivalent to that experienced by a normal person who has just walked in on his or her SO shagging his or her best friend. That is truly how he experiences every slight, even the mildest rebuke or contradiction.

And the result of that is that she is now his enemy. She has called him a liar, contradicted him, belittled him, personally attacked him. And he must now make it his mission (one of them, anyway), however long it takes, to avenge this wound. He won’t hesitate to take it out on the meaningless brown people either, to make them suffer the way her words made him suffer.

The fact that he is mentally ill does not make it the wrong response. It was still the right response because if she had responded with flattery, the only acceptable form of communication about him, nothing more would have been obtained. But she, and her people, are now his deadly enemy, and the more he is forced to help Puerto Rico, the greater his rage.

Tweets personally attacking her are highly likely starting at sundown today and continuing until sundown tomorrow. And if he can’t do that, it will be displaced onto someone else.

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Good god. He also said this before the part you copied.

…so you have all these really rich people, and a man, about 80 years old—very wealthy man, a lot of people didn’t like him—he fell off the stage,” said Trump.

Wow. Sick.

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donnie and co are so used to spinning lies to their ignorant base that they forget that not everyone is stupid. And some of us even speak up. Get off your ass, you lazy, lying carnival barker and get some real help to these people.

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See also WaPo’s piece comparing the lame PR response to what we did after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. But that was back when the Kenyan socialist was Prez, so it doesn’t count.

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St Thomas was already hit hard by Irma and was starting to recover when Maria hit. On St Thomas what Irma started with wind, Maria finished with flash flooding. (Irmareah - When the shit just keeps on coming.) What makes Puerto Rico a harder problem to solve though is that they have hundreds of more miles of road to deal with than either of the US Virgin islands. Getting supplies to the ports is easy. Getting them to the interior requires hours of effort with heavy equipment. None of the islands anticipate having power or phone service for months.

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An absurd comparison. PR is an island in an ocean, a very big ocean. You can’t just drive trucks to it like you can with Haiti.

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