Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló is doing what the kids call “keyboard thugging” or maybe it’s “pump faking” but either way, he’s tough-talking the president of the United States from a safe distance and the mayor of San Juan says it’s because history is going to remember him as a coward.
President Trump and the White House have doubled down on their opposition to granting the island hurricane recovery funding.
Rosselló took to CNN to say that his officials won’t be bullied by Trump and his administration.
“If the bully gets close, I’ll punch the bully in the mouth,” Rosselló told CNN, referring to Trump.
The Mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, was reportedly seen making this face after hearing Rosselló claims.
Rosselló reportedly got on his tough-guy ish after the president told Republican legislators during a closed door meeting Tuesday that Puerto Rico had received too much money to rebuild after Hurricane Maria. The amount “is way out of proportion to what Texas and Florida and others have gotten,” Trump said, according to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), NBC News reports.
Rosselló told CNN that “it would be a mistake to confuse courtesy with courage.” Meanwhile, everyone in Puerto Rico is trying to figure out where all this energy was when the president visited and was shooting hoops with Hurricane survivors’ paper towels.
During that visit in October 2017, Trump also claimed that Puerto Rico was not a “real catastrophe” like Hurricane Katrina was in New Orleans.
“The governor is desperate because he knows that history will remember him as a coward,” San Juan Mayor Cruz—the outspoken voice of Puerto Ricans everywhere who bashed Trump for being a racist shit heel before, during and after his visit—said on Twitter.
“When he had to, the governor of Puerto Rico praised the President. Realizing [now] that his complacent attitude towards Trump is hurting him politically, the governor pretends to be taking Trump on,” Cruz said. Oh, and she is running for governor in 2020.
From NBC News:
Trump has reportedly refused to meet privately with Rosselló numerous times to discuss the pace of disaster relief a year and a half after Maria killed at least 2,975 people in 2017 — making it the deadliest natural disaster in the United States in 100 years .
According to CNN, senior White House officials told Rosselló’s top aides that Puerto Rico representatives were insisting too much on setting a meeting with the president.
One Trump official insisted that they stop requesting the meeting, using a vulgarity to say the governor was messing things up, according to what Puerto Rican officials told CNN.
On Thursday, Trump claimed that he’s taken better care of Puerto Rico than any man ever.
“Puerto Rico has been taken care of better by Donald Trump than by any living human being, and I think the people of Puerto Rico understand it,” he said.
What does that even mean? First off, Trump lost me with the third-person reference but what does any of that mean? Trump has a habit of making these sweeping statements whenever he’s cornered but clearly if Puerto Rico doesn’t understand it, none of us do. Puerto Rico is asking for a sit-down because you haven’t taken care of them.
“In the immediate aftermath of the storm, more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans left for the mainland—some temporarily—and the U.S. territory incurred about $90 billion in damages,” NBC News reports.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency later acknowledged failures in areas including staffing and coordination , and money that was allotted by the Housing and Urban Development Agency is now being investigated to determine if the Trump administration interfered with disaster aid.
So here’s to Auntie Carmen Yulín Cruz for calling a spade a spade both inside and outside of Puerto Rico.