Biden slams Trump for Puerto Rico hurricane response
Puerto Rican #PuertoRican
President Joe Biden and top administration officials criticized the Trump administration Monday for its response to Hurricane Maria five years prior.
Biden, departing the White House Monday morning en route to Ponce, Puerto Rico, told reporters that the people of the island “haven’t been taken very good care of.”
HURRICANE IAN’S DEATH TOLL SURPASSES 70
“They’ve been trying like hell to catch up from the last hurricane,” the president added, just days after Hurricane Fiona left millions of Puerto Ricans without power and water. “I want to see the state of affairs today and make sure we push everything we can.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was even more direct in her comments while discussing the more than $10 billion authorized by the president for the Fiona cleanup.
“The last administration, as I said at the top, restricted [the] ability for Puerto Rico to access $5 billion in funds,” Jean-Pierre told reporters traveling on Air Force One. “And so, that’s including for critical recovery and reconstruction needs, and so, that’s what we saw in the last administration.”
“If you think about where the president is going today, he’s going to the hardest hit area of Puerto Rico, and it is an area that presidents have not gone to before,” she continued. “I think that shows the president and the first lady’s commitment to the people of Puerto Rico to be able to go there to an area where people have lost almost everything.”
Trump visited Puerto Rico to survey damage caused by Maria, a trip largely remembered for Trump tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd alongside government officials.
The Trump administration’s Maria cleanup was additionally characterized by scandal. A Montana company was connected to then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke before being canceled, and a former Federal Emergency Management Agency official accepted bribes connected to $1.8 billion in rebuilding contracts.
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Tags: Joe Biden, News, White House, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico
Original Author: Christian Datoc
Original Location: Biden slams Trump for Puerto Rico hurricane response