GOP worthless from top to bottom
by digby
Trump’s Puerto Rico tweets this morning are a perfect representation of his unique pathology:
3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000…— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018
…..This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018
It takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
Zack Beauchamp at Vox perfectly describes what he’s doing there.
It starts with saying blatantly untrue things that make Trump look better. It continues by claiming any disagreement with his version of reality is politically motivated. And all throughout, the argument involves coded or not-so-coded racial appeals, giving license for white Americans to ignore the suffering of people of color and allowing them to dismiss allegations of racial injustice as political correctness run amok.
But as odious as that is, I think Paul Ryan’s comments were even worse:
House Speaker Paul Ryan on Pres. Trump disputing a report on the Puerto Rico death toll: "There is no reason to dispute these numbers and it's a function of this was a devastating storm that hit an isolated island and that's really no one's fault" https://t.co/PvHxJMGqmq pic.twitter.com/AdxLhiXNRc— Deena Zeina Zaru 👩🏻💻 (@Deena_Zaru) September 13, 2018
First of all, as Colbert pointed out, it’s not King Kong island it’s Puerto Rico fergawdsakes.
Yes, it’s nice that he didn’t find any reason to “dispute” the numbers but the point is that the vast majority of those deaths happened because the government was so slow off the mark! It wasn’t the hurricane that killed them it was the Trump administration’s inability to perform the most basic function of the federal government.
The president made excuses, he lied, he whined, he blamed everyone but his own people for this failure. Now he’s just saying it didn’t happen, the whole thing was a conspiracy and his government’s miserable failure was actually a big success.
And Ryan helped him evade responsibility. They have not had one hearing or investigation about what happened or even the slightest attempt to figure out how to prevent it in the future. This is on the GOP congress just as much as Trump which explains why the Speaker of the House is also whining and blaming and saying that failing to get needed supplies and power to these Americans in a timely manner was an act of God instead of an act of extreme government malfeasance.
Update: Here’s the story of just one victim out of thousands that died because the richest most technologically advanced superpower on the planet couldn’t be bothered to put everything it had into restoring power properly to its own territory populated by its own citizens. It’s horrific.
Remember what he said?
“I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you threw our budget a little out of whack.” They needed every penny for those tax cuts for billionaires.
And you’ll notice he didn’t complain about Texas and Florida busting the budget with their hurricanes.
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