Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of the Puerto Rican capital San Juan, responded on Friday to Donald Trump’s claim that his administration deserved a grade of 10/10 for his handling of the crisis in the hurricane-hit US territory.

“If it’s a 10 out of a scale of 100, of course,” she said. “It’s still a failing grade.”

At a press conference with the governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló, on Thursday, Trump was asked to rate the federal government’s relief effort in the territory – where hundreds of thousands of Americans are still without running water and more than 80% of electricity consumers remain without power – on a scale of one to 10.

“I give ourselves a 10,” the president replied.

Trump has faced consistent criticism for his response to the crisis, including from Cruz, who accused the administration of not doing enough. He visited the island earlier this month and told local officials that they should be “proud” of how few people had died from the storm compared with the death toll during Hurricane Katrina, which he described as a “real catastrophe”.



During that visit, he also tossed paper towels into a crowd that had gathered to see him near San Juan.

Cruz added: “I think the president lives in an alternative reality world, that only he believes the things he is saying. But certainly people are still without electricity. We knew it was going to take a long time for that to happen. But the basic services are still not there yet, and there doesn’t seem to be any [sign] of how it’s supposed to go.”

Trump’s rosy assessment of the Puerto Rico relief effort does not reflect public opinion polls, which show a majority of Americans believe the administration is not doing enough to restore electricity and deliver food and water to the island.

At the press conference with Trump, Rosselló declined to rate the effort, though he was complimentary of the administration’s response. Trump pressed the governor to expand.

“Did the United States, did our government, when we came in, did we do a great job? Military, first responders, Fema, did we do a great job?” Trump asked.

“You responded immediately, sir,” Rosselló said.

The governor continued: “We recognize that there are some logistical limitations that we have in Puerto Rico. We didn’t have the ports open for a couple of days. We didn’t have the airports open at full capacity until about a day or two ago. So, that was always a great limiting step.

“But if you consider that we’ve gotten, even with those obstacles, we’ve gotten about 15,000 DoD [Department of Defense] personnel in Puerto Rico, about 2,000 Fema [Federal Emergency Management Agency] personnel, HHS [health and human services] and others. The response is there. Do we need to do a lot more? Of course we do and I think everyone over here recognizes there’s a lot of work to be done in Puerto Rico. But with your leadership, sir, and with everybody over here, we’re committed to achieving that in the long run.”

Asked if the governor was going for enough in his plea, Cruz said: “Listen, people have different styles and different ways of doing things. I’m always looking injustice in the face. Of course the response got here, but was it enough? No. And people from this administration have admitted to it.”