As Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló is openly pleading with the White House for help in avoiding a humanitarian crisis, Donald Trump is busy tweeting about the NFL, and not planning on offering disaster relief for another 2-3 weeks.
Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said, “We are U.S. citizens that just a few weeks ago went to the aid of other U.S. citizens even as we’re going through our fiscal downturn and as we were hit by another storm. Now, we’ve been essentially devastated. Complete destruction of the power infrastructure, severe destruction of the housing infrastructure, food and water are needed. My petition is that we were there once for our brothers and sisters, our other U.S. citizens, now it’s time that U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico are taken care of adequately, properly.”
The White House isn’t going to request disaster relief from Congress until the first or second week of October:
Senior Hill aide says WH expected to send disaster aid request to Congress in 1st/2nd week of Oct for Puerto Rico. That gets ball rolling.
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— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) September 25, 2017
Gov. Rosselló warned that American citizens are on the verge of a humanitarian crisis, “But now, this is a game changer. This is a completely different set of circumstances and this needs to be taken into consideration. Otherwise, there will be a humanitarian crisis.”
Puerto Ricans are US citizens and the message being sent by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress is that they don’t matter. If white Americans in West Virginia were hit by a major natural disaster, Republicans would respond immediately, but the people of Puerto Rico are being ignored because Trump would rather fight with the NFL than do his job and take care of his own people.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
