Trump tells Puerto Rico to be grateful to him after signing desperately needed disaster relief bill
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello (left) and President Donald Trump (right) in the Oval Office in 2017. Image via AFP/pool.
June 06, 2019
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a disaster relief aid package -- and couldn't help taking another swipe at Puerto Rico.
Writing on Twitter, Trump declared that he had "just signed Disaster Aid Bill to help Americans who have been hit by recent catastrophic storms," and he touted the package as "so important for our GREAT American farmers and ranchers."
Trump then chided Puerto Rico for not being grateful enough for his efforts to get them money that they desperately needed while still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria in 2017.
"Puerto Rico should love President Trump," Trump said. "Without me, they would have been shut out!"
Trump has regularly attacked Puerto Rico and has tried to deny it additional disaster aid funding. He has falsely claimed that the U.S. territory has received $91 billion in disaster aid already, despite the fact that official reports from the Federal Emergency Management Agency show that a mere fraction of that amount has actually been spent.
Trump last year infamously defended his work to help Puerto Rico recover from the hurricane by denying official estimates that thousands of people had died during or in the aftermath of the storm.
“3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico,” Trump falsely claimed. “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.”
And this past April, Trump reportedly ordered that the government stop making disaster relief payments to the island, which prompted Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló to threaten to punch the president.