“All I did last week, or even this week, was ask for help,” Cruz said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “It has to happen in a sustained manner. It has to happen quickly.”

Cruz went on to compliment workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and homeland security adviser Tom Bossert for their work in recent days to restore power to parts of the island. Cruz also said she would be willing to meet with Trump during his planned visit to Puerto Rico this week.

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“If he asks to meet with me, of course I would meet with him,” Cruz said. “I mean, you know, anything that can be done and anyone that can listen.”

Cruz had been among the harshest critics of Trump’s response to hurricanes Irma and Maria, which have killed at least 16 people and left millions across Puerto Rico without food, water and electricity in recent weeks. Cruz struck a more cautious tone after Trump’s attacks on Twitter.

But as Cruz spoke, Trump was again defending the relief effort, calling critics “politically motivated ingrates.”

The political jousting has frustrated many lawmakers and observers, who worry that it distracts from the urgent need to coordinate relief efforts.

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“Every minute we spend in the political realm bickering with one another over who’s doing what, or who’s wrong, or who didn’t do right is a minute of energy and time that we’re not spending trying to get the response right,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said during a Sunday interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

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“I hope we’ll stay 100 percent focused on what needs to be done to get the people of Puerto Rico help. And then we’ll have plenty of time in the future to have these debates about who didn’t do the right thing or what could have been done better,” Rubio said.

Trump and other administration officials insist that the government response has been strong despite widespread damage to roads and bridges as well as poor infrastructure on the island. On Saturday, FEMA released an updated timeline of its response efforts in Puerto Rico, highlighting the delivery of generators and food and water shipments across the island.

FEMA Administrator Brock Long continued defending the agency’s response, citing work to reopen 700 gas stations and roughly 50 percent of “private-sector grocery retail” and return telephone service to a third of the people on the island.

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“I have disaster-assistance employee teams that are inundating Puerto Rico, going door to door, neighborhood to neighborhood, to try to get people registered,” Long said Sunday in interview on “This Week.”

Long also said Cruz needs to be more engaged with coordination efforts on the island by meeting regularly at a joint field office established by the agency.

“She has been there once,” Long said. “This is an operation that needs to happen all of the time.”

He added that FEMA employees have been forced to rebuild many of the most basic services in Puerto Rico, far beyond the demands that are typical in a disaster area.