Hes a racist president: Mainland Puerto Ricans are furious over Donald Trumps debt talk

[HipChick]

Donald Trump’s response to devastation on the island has been markedly different than to damage in Texas and Florida, notably in his repeated mention of the burden of cost. Puerto Ricans have noticed.On Friday, she heard President Donald Trump talk, again, about Puerto Rico’s debts. And she heard him tell a crowd of businesspeople that Puerto Rico’s government would have to help figure out how to pay the cost of the massive rebuilding effort.She fumed.

“I don’t remember him discussing costs when he came to Texas or when he came to Florida,” said Flores, 37, a New Jersey receptionist of Puerto Rican descent. “I’m not surprised. I followed the election, and I am from New York, so I’ve known the name Trump for a very long time. But when people are suffering and dying, and that’s my family, I’m beyond offended.”

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The disparity has been noted with intense dismay by many Puerto Ricans on the mainland. As they worry about their families and friends on the island, they have been forced to grapple with a series of apparent passive-aggressive slights from their president.Some of them say Trump’s response to Maria is another example of the bigotry they saw in a presidential campaign Trump began by calling Mexican immigrants rapists. And some say it is another example of a lingering “colonial” attitude in the federal government’s approach to the island commonwealth the U.S. invaded in 1898. “It’s really hard to talk about bankruptcy and debt when people have no power, no water, no homes, and their entire lives have been devastated,” said Julio Ricardo Varela, 48, a journalist from Puerto Rico who co-hosts the In the Thick political podcast.

“Comments like those come across as not only incredibly short-sighted and insensitive, but it just confirms how the United States, as a country, views its colonial territory. Bringing up the debt just brings up old wounds. ‘Yep, we’re a colony. You had to remind us, huh?’ The island’s destroyed, but you had to remind us that we have no control over our destiny. Thank you.”

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/09/29/hes-a-racist-president-puerto-ricans-are-furious-over-donald-trumps-debt-talk-amid-hurricane-crisis.html

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. He's a racist president? That is like saying

On a sunny blue sky day, the sky is blue.

[jrthin]

2. Or, water is wet. nt