Puerto Rico Mayor Refuses To Work With Trump To Help Her People

Puerto Rico Recovery
So, Carmen, is it "nasty" to set aside the wellbeing of your people for the sake of scoring political points?

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pointed out that ungrateful San Juan Mayor, Carmen Yulin Cruz, made “zero comments” in a meeting with President Trump during his visit to Puerto Rico.

CNN White House correspondent April Ryan asked in a White House press conference about the Trump’s visit to the Puerto Rico. Mayor Cruz has been a very vocal opponent of Trump ever since the federal government started recovery operations in Puerto Rico – so it is surprising that, when face-to-face with the President, she had no comments, requests or advice to impart. Recently Mayor Cruz wore a “nasty” shirt during one of her hundreds of media appearances since the storm hit.

When she asked about the significance of the word “nasty” on the shirt, the mayor simply replied that it was a reference to the President Trump referring to her as a “nasty mayor.” The President had said in a tweet that “The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump,” a week before his visit – and indeed, that seems to be exactly the case.

In an interview with Joy Reid on the “The Rachel Maddow show” on Tuesday night, Mayor Cruz even went so far as to call Trump’s recovery effort “terrible and abominable,” and criticized the round table discussion as a “PR 17-minute meeting.”

Huckabee Sanders responded to the Ryan’s question by saying that the visit was not at all “controversial” and was in fact “widely praised, even by a Democrat Governor.”

She also argued that the Mayor of San Juan was “politicizing” the visit rather than “focusing on the relief efforts.”

The White House Press Secretary continued, added that, “I think that it is sad that the Mayor of San Juan chose to make that a political statement instead of a time of focusing on the relief efforts. The president invited her to be part of that conversation. He specifically asked in the meeting where many were present, including a couple dozen other mayors who were very happy with the recovery effort, the governor, the congresswoman – he opened the floor up for discussion and she actually made zero comments.”

“To me, that would have been the time and the place that she should have weighed in and asked for what she needed and laid out what she was asking for, for San Juan. She didn’t,” Huckabee Sanders added.

Huckabee Sanders concluded with a word of advice for the mayor. She said, “Instead, she chose to wait until the president left, and then criticized him on TV. Which I think is the wrong thing for her to do for her constituents, and I hope the next time she is given the opportunity to help her constituents, she’ll take it.”

Adam Campbell is a former military brat, who grew up all over the world--but considers Milwaukee, WI, where he and his wife currently live, to be his home. He enjoys reporting the real news, without bias.