Distracted, perhaps, by his multi-day feud with the National Football League, it took Donald Trump five full days to respond to the rapidly escalating crisis in Puerto Rico, where millions are without power or potable water after Hurricane Maria decimated the island. On Monday night, the president finally tackled the issue on Twitter in characteristically Trumpian fashion—appearing to blame the islanders, all U.S. citizens, for their affliction. “Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble,” he wrote in a series of posts. “It’s [sic] old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with. Food, water and medical are top priorities - and doing well. #FEMA.”

Puerto Rico’s fiscal crisis is the least of its problems in the short run. With winds raging up to 155 mph, Maria downed 85 percent of phone and Internet cables, and officials predict it will take up to six months to restore electricity across the island. Curfews have been imposed to curb crime and looting, and food, medicine, and drinking water are in scarce supply. Ships attempting deliveries face difficulty upon arrival—Puerto Rico’s ports and airports have been severely damaged. Building have been flattened, chunks of concrete have been ripped out of the streets and the Guajataca dam on the western side of the island is reportedly in “imminent” danger of rupturing. Governor Ricardo Rosselló has called the disaster a “humanitarian crisis occurring in America.”

After initially failing to offer any solution to these problems, beyond reminding Puerto Rico that it is more than $72 billion in debt, President Trump on Tuesday shifted into a different kind of damage control, making several statements praising the work his administration is doing to resolve the crisis. “I mean I think we're really getting really good marks for the work we’re doing,” Trump told reporters at the White House, noting that as a New Yorker, he knows many Puerto Ricans, and that they are good people. “We got A-pluses on Texas and Florida, and we will also on Puerto Rico but the difference is that this is an island, sitting in the middle of an ocean, and its a big ocean, it’s a very big ocean, and we’re doing a really good job.”

The federal disaster relief effort is indeed underway: on Sunday, U.S. Marine and Navy teams arrived on the island to “provide life-saving and life sustaining resources,” according to the Pentagon. Homeland security adviser Tom Bossert and FEMA chief Brock Long landed on Monday to surveil the damage and organize the response. “We’ve done unprecedented movement in terms of federal funding to provide for the people of Puerto Rico,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, despite the fact that the administration has refused to waive federal restrictions on foreign ships carrying life-saving supplies to Puerto Rico, a concession it made for Texas and Florida in the cases of hurricanes Harvey and Irma. “The federal response has been anything but slow.”

Still, local officials are begging the U.S. government to do more, faster, and for Congress to hold an emergency session to appropriate additional relief funds. “Puerto Rico is part of the United States, and we need to take swift action,” Rossello said, calling on the Congress to produce “something tangible, a bill that actually answers to our need right now.” And however much is happening behind the scenes, Trump has rightfully found himself on the defense for his unseemly fixation, amidst the disaster, with professional athletes kneeling during the national anthem. “I have plenty of time on my hands,” Trump explained later Tuesday, during a joint press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. “We are totally focused on [Puerto Rico] but at the same time it doesn’t take me a long time to put out a ‘wrong’ [on Twitter].”