Puerto Rico, Si; El Donald, No
“The president asked me to convey his appreciation for your support,” a source, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, informed me the other day.
I was not surprised. I know some people who blame everything on Trump. An ankle hurts, it’s Trump’s fault. A stomachache, Trump’s fault. High blood pressure... Can’t sleep at night... All Trump’s fault.
Not me. He’s doing a great job, I mean, for a mentally deranged dotard.
Along these lines, I would like to pause in the writing of my history of The Manchurian President to comment briefly on how impressed we all are with the great job he is doing, best in history, in the handling of “this Puerto Rico thing.”
“Puerto Rico is an island,” he was explaining on TV the other night. “Surrounded by water.”
Most islands are.
“Big water, “ he continued. “Ocean water.”
All true.
Why, he could be a geography teacher –if they taught geography as a subject in schools anymore. It sounded like he was talking to kids, as he often does in his presidential addresses.
Checking the facts, Puerto Rico has been in that textbook definition of an island since at least 1898, when under another Republican president (McKinley) we invaded that water-challenged island during the Spanish-American War (That was the war against Spain, he might have explained).
The Spanish-American War! O! What a lovely war! Back in the days when America used to win wars. 30 days of conflict, seven dead, a small price to pay for one of Spain’s two principle possessions in the Caribbean (Cuba the other).
El Presidente was showing his grasp of geography about the 108-mile long, 40-mile wide, island surrounded by water because, in his words, that’s what was creating a logistical challenge in rushing aid to our fellow citizens in the Commonwealth.
It made one think of other logistical challenges, such as the invasion of Normandy in World War II. Or getting to the moon. Not to mention Texas and Florida.
Aid was desperately needed because our fellow citizens lacked food, potable water, tarps for roofs ripped off by Hurricane Maria. The electric grid was down. Streets were flooded. Roads and bridges were out. “We are dying,” the mayor of San Juan told Anderson Cooper on the leading name in fake news, CNN.
When was the 7th —or even the 8th —Cavalry coming to their rescue?
From his command post in the Twitter bunker of the presidential golf club in Bedminster, N.J., El Donald took umbrage at the pleas for help, which he called “politically motivated,” engineered by Democrats to make him look bad.
Anyway, folks on the island surrounded by so much water shouldn’t be in such a hurry to get the essentials for survival because Puerto Rico was $73 billion in debt, owed to hedge funds and banks. They were a bunch of dead beats, expecting overnight deliveries by FedEx or Amazon!
To some of us this may have sounded like going from the vein of irony to the jugular vein, coming from a man who had proudly called himself the King of Debt with four bankruptcies to his credit. But I say the man is all heart.
From the balcony of the Bedminster golf club, the president might have said he could see Puerto Rico. Nevertheless, only 14 days after the hurricane hit, by Oct. 3 he was rushing to survey the devastation in his only Commonwealth island surrounded by water.
It was not his first visit. Back in the day when Trump thought he was the greatest gift to mankind as a golf course genius, he had bought into the Coco Beach resort with partners. Renamed Trump International Golf Club of Puerto Rico, by 2008 the company eventually filed for bankruptcy. Did this mean that Trump bankrupted the golf course? Not at all. He merely did the honorable thing, walking away from the problem, just as he did in Atlantic City four (4) times. The Coco Beach deal was a coup, leaving the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico with a $25 million plus debt package, while confirming his qualifications as a great deal maker who wanted to run the Federal Government like a golf business.
El Presidente landed on the island surrounded by water in his Air Force yesterday, like the Conquistadores of the Spanish realm, immediately praising what a great job his administration is doing. That kind of high praise should shut up all the politically motivated ingrate chatter heard on the fake news.
Some will say he acted like a moron as president, joking about how Puerto Rico recovery aid was throwing the budget out of whack, something he hadn’t laid on the people of Texas and Florida or those who will benefit from his tax reform.
Among his other insults was diminishing the disaster of Maria by comparing it with Katrina. You should be happy you didn’t face a real tragedy, like Katrina was his message. Playing the numbers games with the death toll was his idea of sharing the pain, as Bill Clinton used to say.
The highlight of the half-day tour was throwing paper towel rolls at the victims, like a modern day monarch, who was saying, “Let them eat paper toweling.” As he told the reporters on his way out the door, “Lots of love in this room.”
Keep up the good work, Senor Mr. President.
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Marvin Kitman
October 4, 2017