An analysis against the coverage of the left-leaning media
Trump’s Katrina? Try the Media’s Waterloo
President Trump took on the Left’s politicization of the NFL last week. This week, he is taking on their appropriation of natural disasters and human caused horrors for political gain.
The Left and its accomplices in the press couldn’t pin the blame on Trump for the administration’s responses to the hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast states and U.S. territories early last month. But in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which hit the U.S. island territory of Puerto Rico especially hard, they thought they finally got their story.
Instead of focusing on the myriad logistical challenges of reaching an island more than 900 miles away from the U.S. mainland, or on how FEMA has worked with the Puerto Rican central government and most municipalities, or the ins-and-outs of federal disaster management, the media pounced on Trump.
They couldn’t wait to allege that Trump’s response was akin to George W. Bush’s Hurricane Katrina performance. CNN ran an article with the headline, “‘Trump’s Katrina?’ No, it’s much worse.” A piece at The Daily Beast authored by noted Trump-hater Joy-Ann Reid of MSNBC was titled, “Puerto Rico is Trump’s Katrina.” The Leftist fever swamp Salon ran an article, “‘We are doing a great job’: Is this Trump’s Katrina moment?”
From the media’s lips to God’s ears.
The most transparent response came from the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz. Earlier last week, Cruz described FEMA as “wonderful” and doing an all-around “great job.” She noted further that federal officials “have been here since last week—helping us and setting up logistics.”
But at a morning press conference on Saturday, Cruz completely changed her tune. As she stood in front of pallets of water bottles and other supplies, she shouted, “We are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency, and the bureaucracy!” Cruz claimed if Trump didn’t do something quickly, “we are going to see something close to a genocide.” The irony of this scene, of course, was completely lost on the press.
Trump, understanding exactly what was taking place, fired back:
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.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
…Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
…want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
Trump’s refusal to serve as a Republican punching bag for Cruz, a rabid Hillary Clinton supporter, and other Democrats sent shock waves through the media. In marked contrast with previous Republican presidents, Trump understands the Democratic-Media complex’s playbook when it comes to natural disasters when Republicans are in office: shame them into submission for their errors—real or imagined. And for the coup de grace, hint in not so subtle language that race was the deciding factor in how the disaster was handled.
Kanye West infamously claimed George W. Bush didn’t care about black people in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Seeking to reprise this Kanye moment in 2017, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) saidover the weekend that “we have a right to be suspect that he is treating the people in Puerto Rico in a different way than he has treated the people of Texas or Florida.” While the Charlie Browns of theestablishment Republican Party dutifully took their place in line to attempt to kick away the football of these ridiculous “racism” charges, Trump and his team acted.
According to FEMA: “12,600 federal staff representing 36 departments and agencies and including more than 800 FEMA personnel, on the ground in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands engaged in response and recovery operations from Hurricanes Maria and Irma.” Trump waived the Jones Act, a 1920 law that had the unintended consequence of preventing some ships from reaching Puerto Rico with food, water, and other essentials. Retired Navy Captain Jerry Hendrix noted, “Amphibious ships including the light amphibious carriers Kearsarge and Wasp and the amphibious landing ship dock Oak Hill were at sea and dispatched to Puerto Rico ahead of the hurricane’s impact.”
In light of these actions and the operations on the ground, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló saidhe was “very grateful for the administration” and that “they have responded quickly.” He continued:
The president has been very attentive to the situation, personally calling me several times. FEMA and the FEMA director have been here in Puerto Rico twice. As a matter of fact, they were here with us today, making sure that all the resources in FEMA were working in conjunction with the central government.
Other Puerto Rican government officials have contradicted Mayor Cruz’s over-the-top claims. Guaynabo Mayor Angel Perez, who also happens to be a member of a left-wing political party, contrasted his experiences with Cruz’s:
My experience is different. I have been participating in different meetings at the headquarters of FEMA and our government and the help is coming in and right now my experience is different from hers. I’m receiving help from the government, we are receiving assistance from FEMA, I got people over here helping us with applications for the people that have damage in their houses. And we have here in Guaynabo, we have thousands of people that lost partially or totally their houses.
In fact, according to FEMA Chief Brock Long, Cruz isn’t even in contact with the central FEMA field office in Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico’s problems have nothing to do with a dearth of aid from the mainland or the Trump Administration. As the left-leaning Huffington Post reports, the problem is distribution. The island’s infrastructure has been reduced to rubble. The Category 4 hurricane destroyed roads, bridges, and the entire power grid. It will take weeks, perhaps even months, for power to be restored.
Fact is, the small commonwealth was already in deep trouble even before the storm hit. The island’s power grid had been in very poor shape for quite some time. Residents were suffering regular outages, regardless of the weather. And the horrible state of Puerto Rico’s public finances looms large. Puerto Rico filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, racking up debts and unfunded liabilities of more than $123 billion for a territory that is home to just over 3.5 million people. No doubt rampant corruption, gross public mismanagement, and poor politics have helped contribute to the disaster that has befallen Puerto Ricans. All told, Puerto Rico’s problems preceded these storms and are not likely to get any better once the damage is cleaned up.
But for the media, it’s far easier to simply castigate Trump, the man who represents for them all that is soulless and evil in the world. In their limitless hypocrisy, they consider these actions to be “normal” in contrast to Trump’s behavior, which they continually claim is anything but.
The vitriol of the media isn’t limited just to Trump. It also extends to those merely suspected of having voted for the president. Far too often, they have become targets of rage and even violence. An extreme case occurred just after a gunman opened fire on a country music festival in Las Vegas. Early Monday morning, Hayley Geftman-Gold, the now-former vice president and senior counsel for CBS, commentedon Facebook that she wasn’t “sympathetic” with the victims of the horrific shooting because “country music fans often are Republican gun toters.” So much for tolerance and compassion.
As Michael Walsh has said of the Left and their comrades in the media, “They never stop, they never sleep, they never quit.” Luckily for the American people, we finally have a president who understands that truth and is willing to punch back.
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