Purely outrageous: CNNs Jim Acosta blasts Trumps strange and un-presidential Puerto Rico trip

Donald Trump on Tuesday left CNN’s senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta baffled, after the president visited the storm-ravaged U.S. territory of Puerto Rico and threw rolls of paper towels at American citizens in need.

“It seems when the teleprompter is off, often the wheels come off, and we saw that happen earlier today in Puerto Rico,” Acosta told host Don Lemon. The CNN reporter pointed to Trump’s comparison of the death toll from Hurricane Maria with death tolls from prior catastrophes.

“You don’t compare one tragedy to another when you’re President of the United States,” Acosta explained. “You’re there, on the ground, to be consoler-in-chief.”

The reporter also noted Trump berated Puerto Rico for “throwing the budget out of whack” during a press conference on Tuesday, a statement Acosta said is “not what people on the ground during a natural disaster want to hear.”

Lemon then played a clip of Trump tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd gathered to greet him at a hurricane relief center, prompting Acosta to argue the president’s behavior was way off-base.

“Can you imagine if we were covering President Barack Obama visiting a hurricane zone, an area devastated by a hurricane, and Barack Obama had been throwing rolls of paper towels at hurricane victims?” Acosta asked. “To me, it’s almost like we’ve lost our sense of what is purely outrageous coming from this president anymore.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/purely-outrageous-cnns-jim-acosta-blasts-trumps-strange-and-un-presidential-puerto-rico-trip/