Trump's PR Problem

Donald Trump's response to the devastation in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria got off to a shaky start and has been progressively worsening ever since.  His initial explanation that Puerto Rico's geography was a detriment to aid-delivery efforts didn't go over to well with folks who were never going to take his comments at face value anyway, but there was an element of truth to it - with the island a thousand miles away from the American mainland, it is more difficult to send aid there than to send aid to an area in the lower forty-eight in need of help, and the ships and planes needed to send aid to Puerto Rico were impeded by damage done by the storm to the airport at the territory's capital, San Juan, as well as to the city's harbor (the "rich harbor" where San Juan was established less than five hundred years ago gave the island its name).  Puerto Rico's governor, Ricardo Rosselló, was, at first, very complimentary toward Trump and his administration for their response to the crisis and the handling of the situation.

So where's the aid?  Uh, yeah, that's the part Trump can't figure out - actually getting all of the supplies to the island.

It's been nearly a week since Trump said he was taking charge, and many if not most Puerto Rico residents are still without clean water, electricity is sporadic at best, and gasoline lines are rivaling those of the 1973 fuel crisis that affected the fifty states as well as the territories.  A hospital ship based in Norfolk just left for the island over the weekend and is not supposed to arrive there until later this week, having set sail later than she could have.  Supplies are taking forever to get to Puerto Rico, and both the geography issue and the damaged-port defense are wearing awfully thin.  Rosselló has grown more impatient.  But Trump still brags about the "fantastic job" that thousands of federal employees are doing in putting everything back together.  And, to paraphrase the late Muhammad Ali, it's called bragging only when you can't back it up.

But get this.  Trump not only said that Puerto Rico is to blame for its own troubles because of all of the mismanagement of the island's finances that occurred before Maria (imagine Obama telling New Jersey after Sandy that the state's financial troubles brought the aftereffects of the storm on itself - you can't, can you?) but he's also blasted San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz for poor leadership.

You mean leadership like this?

Oh yeah, he also said that Puerto Rico residents aren't doing enough to help themselves and shouldn't rely so much on outside help.

Uh, they're on an island with no phones, no lights, practically no gas for their motorcars . . .. Even Gilligan and his fellow castaways had more luxuries!

Thus was the last straw for Americans of Puerto Rican descent, including Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda, who minced no words and pulled no punches when it came to expressing his thoughts about Trump. "You're going straight to hell," he told Trump via Twitter. "No long lines for you. Someone will say, 'Right this way, sir.'  They'll clear a path."

And maybe he'll meet Rick Scott on the way down.

But then Trump is not only evil, he's stupid. He explained Puerto Rico's geographic isolation by saying that it is "an island surrounded by water, big water, ocean water"  (of course it's surrounded by water, it wouldn't be an island otherwise, would it?) and also that it's sitting in "the middle of the ocean" when it is in fact a part of a chain of islands separating the Atlantic from the Caribbean.  He didn't think to waive a law protecting an American monopoly on interstate and state-to-territory maritime commerce that is responsible for making things in Puerto Rico expensive until enough people complained about it.  And his advisers are no help.  Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke probably cost herself the job on a permanent basis by saying that it was a "good news story."

Puerto Rico is an island of nearly three and a half million people, all of them American citizens (not too many people seem to know that!).  Yet Puerto Rico residents cannot vote in presidential elections and their non-voting territorial delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives can't even vote in the Committee On the Whole (which I explained here).   They have no political power outside the island, and now they have no electrical power either.  They're in dire straits.  And Trump is wagging his short finger at the people of Puerto Rico and telling them to pull their own weight in this crisis while bragging about what a wonderful job the federal government is doing when he can't make the claim?  No!  This is not a good news story.

Trump is trying to convince everyone that he's on the ball with this crisis, but here's the truth.  He has a catastrophic mess on his hands in Puerto Rico, and his efforts to make himself look good with a smarmy public relations campaign make him look exponentially worse.

In other words, he has a bad PR situation compounded by a bad PR situation.

Hence, the double-entendre title of this post.