President Donald Trump's trip to Puerto Rico — hours after implying that the residents of the island were to blame for the destruction stemming from the natural disaster that befell the American territory — was highlighted by a photo op in which he bragged about his disaster response and once again seemed to blame residents because the U.S. will have to spend money there.
"I hate to tell you Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack because we spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico, and that's fine," Trump said. "We have saved a lot of lives."
"You have thrown our budget a little out of whack, because we've spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico and that's fine," Pres. Trump says pic.twitter.com/9V4caKaG80
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 3, 2017
The president also was obsessed with comparing Maria to Hurricane Katrina. He pointed to Katrina's death toll, which was over 1,000, to the official tally of 16, which, Puerto Rican officials admit, is out of date.
"You can be very proud, only 16 versus thousands in Katrina," he said.
Trump compares the death count in Puerto Rico to that of Hurricane Katrina. pic.twitter.com/VuWyOEpBq9 — Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) October 3, 2017
“If you looked — every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died," he said, "And you look at what happened here with really a storm that was just totally overbearing, nobody has seen anything like this.”
Trump was quick to point out what a great job his administration was doing, by playing up the disaster on the island in his opening remarks:
This has been the toughest one. This is a Category 5, which few people have ever heard of. It hit land, and boy did it hit land.
But the president was also focused on what politicians were saying about him. Days after Trump lashed out at San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz for being "nasty to Trump," the president ignored her — save for a handshake — and instead brought up that other politicians were saying he did a good job.
"I just want to tell you that right from the beginning this governor was not playing politics," Trump said of Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló. "He was giving us the highest grades."
"Right from the beginning, this governor didn’t play politics,” Pres. Trump says of Puerto Rico's governor https://t.co/TgRZD92YSg pic.twitter.com/1qeaI8nJmR
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 3, 2017
Minutes after complaining about the Puerto Rico-sized hole coming out of Trump's budget, the president boasted that he was ordering expensive new planes for the military.
"Amazing job. So amazing we are ordering hundreds of millions of dollars of new airplanes for the Air Force," Trump said. Especially the F-35. You like the F-35? ... You can't see it. You literally can't see it. It's hard to fight a plane you can't see."
And then, there was how he ended the photo op:
Trump literally just ended a conversation with a family of Puerto Rican victims by saying "Have a good time". He's fun. pic.twitter.com/M8b9jgbFz0
— Mitch Silpa (@Silpatweets) October 3, 2017
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