You may recall that back on October 2, 2017, soon after your native Puerto Rico was hit by Hurricane Marie, Trump visited the island and disrespected its citizens by throwing paper towels to those who had gathered to hear him say how he was going to rebuild their shattered country. He also slammed local officials and claimed the death toll of 3,000 Puerto Ricans was “grossly exaggerated”.
Over the last three years Trump has repeatedly indicated time and time again that he did not want any more federal money spent on rebuilding Puerto Rico.
Oct 23, 2018 Trump tweeted: The people of Puerto Rico are wonderful, but the inept politicians are trying to use the massive and ridiculously high amounts of hurricane/disaster funding to pay off other obligations. The U.S. will NOT bail out long outstanding & unpaid obligations with hurricane relief money!
November 12, 2018 CNN reported: “White House officials have told congressional leaders and appropriators that President Donald Trump does not want any additional relief funding sent to Puerto Rico, a congressional leadership aide told CNN on Monday.”
On April 15, 2019 Trump again tweeted: Puerto Rico got 91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane, more money than has ever been gotten for a hurricane before, & all their local politicians do is complain & ask for more money. The pols are grossly incompetent, spend the money foolishly or corruptly, & only take from USA…. ….The best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico is President Donald J. Trump. So many wonderful people, but with such bad Island leadership and with so much money wasted. Cannot continue to hurt our Farmers and States with these massive payments, and so little appreciation!
Fact check of the above tweet: At the time only $11 million of congressionally allocated money had been released by the Trump administration for post-hurricane aid. At that point, the federal government had spent $120 million in aid after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The Government Accountability Office issued a report in September of 2019 which said that after a thorough investigation it found no evidence of fraud. However, the report instead criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for an inadequate response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria.
According to a report by the New York Times on January 15, 2020: “The Trump administration imposed severe restrictions on Wednesday on billions of dollars in emergency relief to Puerto Rico, including blocking spending on the island’s electrical grid . . .”
So for almost three years after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico Donald Trump has done his best to minimize and tie strings to the money allocated by Congress for the rebuilding effort. In addition, the Republican-controlled Senate, at his urging, has refused to move forward with additional aid packages. After all, why should Donald Trump want to aid the American citizens who live in Puerto Rico, since they can’t vote for him in the 2020 presidential election?
But suddenly, only 6 weeks before the election Trump has suddenly reversed course. Evidently analysts in his campaign evidently figured out that without the support of you, the former Puerto Rican Americans in Florida, including those of you who migrated to Florida after Hurricane Maria, it would be very difficult for Trump to win Florida. Given that if Trump loses Florida there is virtually no path for him to win the Electoral College, something had to be done.
The path forward chosen by Trump and his campaign is a blatant attempt to buy your vote. Trump announced today that he would be providing an additional $13 billion in additional aid to Puerto Rico to help with rebuilding in the aftermath of 2017’s Hurricane Maria. (Never mind it is three years too late, but better late than never, right?) He also announced that aid package will include $11.6 billion for funding for rebuilding Puerto Rico’s devastated electrical grid which he specifically refused to provide funds to rebuild for three years, reiterating that position as late as January of this year.
The only questions now for you, the Florida citizens of Puerto Rican decent, are: Do you trust Donald Trump? Are you going to succumb to his blatantly obvious effort to buy your vote after he spent three years of doing everything in his power to minimize the distribution of the federal funds necessary to rebuild Puerto Rico? Personally, I think that you are too smart to believe Trump’s claim that, “I am the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico!” The question for the rest of us, how are we going to react to this blatant attempt to buy votes?
Cajun (Rick Guilbeau) 9/18/20