Trump flunks his disaster test, just being himself
His shot at Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz is her reward for criticizing Team Trump's responses to her city's pleas for help. "President Trump continues to demonstrate his inability to understand what his job in this crisis was all about," she tweeted. "This was never about him, this was never about politics. This was about saving lives."
Or, at least, it was supposed to be. For other politicians, his deep denialism might be viewed as a gaffe. To Trump, it's a political tactic: treat failure as success, unless you can blame it on someone else. Show disdain for inconvenient facts. Make a partisan appeal by accusing your opponents of being partisan.
And tune out anyone who finds even a hint of racism or ethnic bias in your strategy. We saw that a year ago when Trump tweeted that Puerto Ricans "want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort."
Ten months ago he compared Puerto Rico's death toll with that of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which he called "a real catastrophe." Now it turns out that more apparently died in Puerto Rico. The body count that vexed Trump so much resulted from a George Washington University study commissioned by the island's government, a study that actually came out with a lower body count than a Harvard study that estimated more than 4,600 dead earlier this year.
But critics of Trump's imprudent hurricane tweets have upset Trump's friends closer to home, as Republicans try to hold onto their congressional majority in the November midterm elections. House Speaker Paul Ryan quickly announced that he had found "no reason to dispute" the estimates that Trump wanted to call a hoax.
Indeed, with the morgues full and people burying their friends and relatives in their front yards, Puerto Ricans had little reason to doubt the numbers, either. Perhaps President Trump forgot that Puerto Rican's are born American citizens who can vote. Indeed, thousands are reported to have moved to Florida, where they could have a big impact on future elections.
That's what makes Trump's denial of Puerto Rico's tragedy so shocking. Seldom do we see a savvy politician talk himself so eagerly into a hole.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
