Destroyed communities are seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Toa Alta, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 28. | Gerald Herbert/AP Photo Trump’s upbeat Puerto Rico rhetoric clashes with reality on the ground

President Donald Trump says his administration is deftly responding to the devastating hurricane that leveled Puerto Rico, but the jarring gap between his rhetoric and the dramatic reports about dire conditions there is raising fresh questions about the effectiveness of recovery efforts on the island.

As his administration grapples with the third hurricane to hit the United States in a matter of weeks, and as the relief operation in Puerto Rico kicks into gear, Trump has repeatedly said he’s getting positive reviews. "Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello just stated: 'The Administration and the President, every time we've spoken, they've delivered,'” Trump tweeted Friday.


But nine days after Hurricane Maria knocked out the island’s power, communications system and some roadways, Americans there are still struggling to get supplies and phone service.

“There’s always a danger whenever you start responding in a way that says, ‘Hey we’ve done a great job,’ and there are still people in need,” said Thomas Atkin, a former Coast Guard admiral and principal deputy assistant secretary of defense under President Barack Obama. “It’s kind of like a football coach at halftime saying, ‘Hey, we’re winning.’ You still have half a game to play.”

Publicly, Trump and Gov. Ricardo Rosselló have praised each other, with the president claiming Friday morning on Twitter, “FEMA and First Responders are amazing. Governor said ‘great job!’” But while Rosselló has repeatedly expressed gratitude for the federal help, he told MSNBC on Friday that the federal “response still is not where it needs to be.”

Part of the problem is, as Trump has said, that it’s more difficult to move resources to Puerto Rico than to Texas or Florida, which were also hit by major storms recently.

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“This is a lot harder than people think,” said Craig Fugate, Obama’s FEMA director who was largely praised for his work at the agency.

But Puerto Rico’s government also was less prepared for Hurricane Maria than Texas or Florida were. Puerto Rico’s electrical grid was already decayed from years of neglect and was damaged further by Hurricane Irma days before Maria hit. Once the power and cell service were knocked out, along with the roads, the government’s ability to operate was crippled.

At the same time, federal officials are hampered in how decisively they can respond in Puerto Rico. Local leaders bristle at the idea the military should take over operations, for example, valuing their independence from Washington. Instead, they have requested more helicopters, military help to fix roads, and faster approval from the Federal Aviation Administration for companies seeking to fix communications systems.

“Puerto Rico isn’t Texas. It isn’t Florida. It’s a world of its own. And it’s a complete mess,” said one official, in a telephone interview from San Juan, who is assisting the administration and didn’t want to speak publicly for fear of upsetting the alliance between the governments in San Juan and Washington.

The sense that the Trump administration’s response has been off-key has not helped.

When Trump has tried to point out Puerto Rico’s infrastructure problems, he has come across as blaming it, bringing up that the island was in debt “to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with,” as he tweeted Monday. Pointing out the difference in preparedness compared to Texas and Florida reads as “talking down to the victim,” said Tevi Troy, who served as a deputy assistant to President George W. Bush for domestic policy when Hurricane Katrina hit.

Local officials dispute that characterization as well. “We’ve been here for 10 days and we still don’t have reliable communications…And that’s our fault? That’s bad management on our part?” asked one Puerto Rico official who also did not want to be named so as not to disrupt relations with Washington.

Trump raised congressional ire on Wednesday when he explained a reluctance to waive the Jones Act, a shipping law, because he was hearing from “a lot of shippers and … a lot of people who work in the shipping industry that don’t want the Jones Act lifted.” The administration waived the act on Thursday and said it had done so as soon as Puerto Rico’s governor made the request.

The rest of the administration has talked up its own actions, too. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke called the Puerto Rico response a “good news story,” though she later clarified that she was not satisfied. “This is textbook, and it’s been done well,” homeland security adviser Tom Bossert echoed, calling the response “unprecedented.”

And, in a repetition of one of Trump’s own favorite lines, he added: “They’re going to come out bigger, better and stronger than ever.”

Critics have fired back against the early celebratory talk.

“Damn it, this is not a good news story,” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz told CNN on Friday. “This is a people are dying story. This is a life or death story. This is a there's a truck-load of stuff that cannot be taken to people story. This is a story of a devastation that continues to worsen because people are not getting food and water.”

The relief official who spoke to POLITICO from San Juan said mainland officials need to reorient their thinking about the depth of the problems in Puerto Rico.

“We have to think of this as societal collapse: no power, no water, no food, no nothing,” the official said. “We came in thinking this would be a traditional model of disaster response … It is up to us to keep everything moving. Civil society is pretty much gone, and we didn’t realize that until like 36 or 48 hours ago. And who knows when it’s going to end.”

