Now that Donald Trump has done himself the disservice of reminding everyone what a horrible, horrible job he did overseeing the disaster relief in Puerto Rico after last year’s devastating hurricane season — and Hurricane Maria, the worst storm ever to hit the tiny American island — it was only a matter of time before people began to remember the idiotic stunts he pulled during that time.
Aside from spending the vast majority of his time during that crisis tweeting about kneeling NFL players and arguing with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz about whose fault it was that the relief efforts were so shortsighted and slow, even Trump’s in-person appearance before the US citizens on the storm-ravaged island was a massive disaster of its own.
Trump was widely ridiculed for days after an appearance at a church during which his team appeared to be personally distributing “supplies” hastily gathered at a nearby Costco on the way from the airport. The President himself was filmed tossing rolls of paper towels triumphantly at the struggling residents.
Now that old footage has resurfaced and gone viral on social media, and according to Trump’s aides, as quoted in a report in the Washington Post, he is none too happy about it.
At one point, in a private conversation with an aide, Trump reportedly complained, “I’m not to blame for this.”
The viral video comes on the heels of Trump’s incendiary tweets about the death toll from Hurricane Maria, largely considered to be his most insensitive tweets of all time, despite some heavy competition. Beginning on Thursday, Trump tweeted a series of blame-shifting denials of the official count, faulting Democrats for “making up” the numbers in order to make him look bad:
3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018
…..This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018
Then on Friday, after a sizable majority of Trump supporters insisted that he hadn’t meant the people didn’t die at all, but merely that they died later on and shouldn’t be counted for some reason, Trump proved them all wrong again by actually denying that the people died, period:
“When Trump visited the island territory last October, OFFICIALS told him in a briefing 16 PEOPLE had died from Maria.” The Washington Post. This was long AFTER the hurricane took place. Over many months it went to 64 PEOPLE. Then, like magic, “3000 PEOPLE KILLED.” They hired….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2018
….GWU Research to tell them how many people had died in Puerto Rico (how would they not know this?). This method was never done with previous hurricanes because other jurisdictions know how many people were killed. FIFTY TIMES LAST ORIGINAL NUMBER – NO WAY!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2018
We can see how Trump may be irritated that this video is making the rounds again. He would probably hate it if you shared this with your friends.
Featured image via screen capture
