WASHINGTON — President Trump has a ready answer for anyone who questions his administration’s response to the hurricanes that laid waste to Texas, Florida, the United States Virgin Islands and now Puerto Rico.

“We are doing a great job,” he declared on Tuesday in the Rose Garden. “We did a great job in Texas, a great job in Florida, a great job in Louisiana. We hit little pieces of Georgia and Alabama. And frankly,” he added, “we’re doing — ”

Then he stopped himself to gild the lily even further.

Puerto Rico, Mr. Trump pointed out, posed a special challenge to disaster relief efforts. “It’s on an island in the middle of the ocean,” he observed to a reporter who asked him whether he had been too consumed by his feud with the National Football League to give it proper attention. “You can’t just drive your trucks there from other states.”

Despite those hurdles, he said, the territory’s governor, Ricardo A. Rosselló, told him: “The entire federal work force is doing great work in Puerto Rico. And I appreciated his saying it. And he’s saying it to anybody that will listen.”