Donald Trump tries to convince us that Puerto Rico officials are lying

| 7:01 pm EDT September 28, 2017
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Based on his track record alone, it’s fair to assume that Donald Trump is lying about his administration’s response to the post-hurricane crisis in Puerto Rico. All you have to do is take a look at his inexcusably slow response to confirm as much. But now the Trump administration wants us to believe it’s actually the Puerto Rico officials who are lying about the federal relief effort.

Carmen Yulin Cruz, the Mayor of San Juan, vented to CNN about how the Trump administration was throwing red tape at her and forcing her to write memos in order to get minor facilitations approved (link). In response, Donald Trump sent Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert to the podium today to tell tall tales about how the Trump administration’s Puerto Rico relief efforts are going wonderfully. Bossert ended up taking things way too far.

Bossert declared that the “Mayor’s just dead wrong” (link) when it comes to the claims she made to CNN. In other words, the Trump administration wants us to believe that the Mayor of San Juan is lying about the Trump administration’s response for no good reason. Even as George W. Bush was utterly failing in his Hurricane Katrina relief effort, he never sunk low enough to try to convince us that local officials were lying when they complained about the failed effort. But it gets even worse.

Either because he was trying to add insult to injury, or because he’s too bad at choosing his words to be speaking in public, Tom Bossert said that Puerto Rico will be “blown away” when it sees the size of the Trump administration’s relief effort. Blown away? He’s saying this to an island full of people who just got devastated by a hurricane? God help us all.

Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.