Donald Trump finally admits the insanely corrupt reason he’s letting Americans die in Puerto Rico
Weeks after Hurricane Maria crushed Puerto Rico and left its millions of American citizens without electricity or drinking water, the Donald Trump administration’s relief and recovery effort has been painfully inept. Famous athletes and musicians have done more to help the people on the island with private jets than Trump has. Now he’s finally admitting the reason he’s been sitting back and letting people die down there: money. And it’s not even his money.
There’s an obscure, nearly hundred year old law called the Jones Act which was intended to favor U.S. owned shipping companies, but over the years it’s since had the unintended consequence of making it cumbersome to ship things from the mainland United States to Puerto Rico. At the moment, that law is specifically preventing emergency supplies from reaching Puerto Rico. Trump could temporarily waive that law with the stroke of a pen, and in fact he did precisely that when hurricanes hit Texas and Florida. Burt even though the Jones Act is negatively impacting Puerto Rico much more directly, Trump has yet to waive it. His reasoning?
Trump told a pool of reporters that “We have a lot of shippers and a lot of people that work in the shipping industry that don’t want the Jones Act lifted.” That’s his actual quote. He’s openly admitting that because some of his wealthy cronies in the shipping industry don’t want to lose a few days’ worth of revenue, he’s willing to let people continue to die in Puerto Rico. Again, these people are United States citizens.
The shipping industry is probably afraid that if the federal government suspends the Jones Act temporarily, it’ll open the door for the people of Puerto Rico to get a permanent exemption, because that law has always unfairly impacted them. As per his custom, Trump is siding with the rich people who want the law to work unfairly in their favor, no matter how badly it screws middle class Americans – or in this case kills them.
