Unfit President Fails Puerto Rico

Michelle Goldberg
OCT. 3, 2017

... A little more than eight months ago, the United States inaugurated one of its worst people as president, a nasty showbiz huckster whose own staffers speak of him as if he were a malevolent toddler ...

... there were emboldened Nazis marching in the streets, and crucial intelligence on the Islamic State casually passed to the Russians. Striving young immigrants who’d been protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program have seen their lives upended and trans people have been barred from enlisting in the military ...

Reports from post-hurricane Puerto Rico tell of American citizens experiencing a level of humanitarian desperation usually seen only in the poorest of countries. As of Saturday, according to the Department of Defense, only 45 percent of customers on the island had access to drinking water. People are frantically seeking food and medical supplies, and there’s not enough diesel to deliver much of the aid that’s reached San Juan. While that city’s mayor pleaded with the world for help, the president of the United States tweeted racially inflected insults at her and her people from his golf club. He implied they are lazy and “want everything to be done for them” rather than helping themselves ...

... it was only when Trump started seeing Puerto Rico coverage on cable television that a sense of urgency kicked in. Even then, he was mostly concerned with how the story reflected on him ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/opinion/trump-fails-puerto-rico.html