Lin-Manuel Miranda Blasts Trump On Puerto Rico Recovery: ‘Our President Lies To Himself And Lies To You’
Lin-Manuel Miranda isn’t taking too kindly to President Donald Trump’s statements about Puerto Rico’s hurricane recovery.
The actor and playwright took to Twitter to attack Trump’s claim that America had spent $91 billion on recovery from Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island more than a year ago and has still left thousands without essentials. Trump also claimed that the people in Puerto Rico “only take from USA” despite the fact that Puerto Ricans are also American citizens.
Trump’s estimate of $91 billion in relief was actually the total damage caused by the storm, and the figure Trump claimed that Puerto Rico received was close to nine times higher than the actual aid that it received.
“They super didn’t,” Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote on Twitter in response to Trump’s claim about aid. “91 Billion was the estimated DAMAGE. Puerto Rico is still WAITING for most of their allocated relief funds, while our president lies to himself and lies to you.”
Donald Trump came under widespread criticism for the misstatements and implications that Puerto Rico was not part of the United States, and other members of the administration repeated his stance. White House spokesman Hogan Gidley appeared on MSNBC on Tuesday, also making implications that Puerto Rico was not part of the United States, referring to it as “that country.” As Mother Jones noted, Gidley later issued a statement calling it a “slip of the tongue.”
Others have joined Lin-Manuel Miranda in blasting the president for his statements on Puerto Rico. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who has frequently traded barbs with Trump about the federal government’s slow response to the natural disaster, suggested that Trump holds a personal grudge against the island.
“You know, the president had a golf course here, which many people may not have remembered, and it went bankrupt. I don’t know if that is the root of his vindictive behavior towards Puerto Rico,” Cruz said (via Fox News), adding, “but he’s also insensitive and he’s also prone to classic Donald Trump temper tantrums. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he will try and put people down and try to take away the most basic thing.”
Folks are missing a key thing that makes Trump's Puerto Rico tweets so awful.
Trump isn't merely lying about how much PR has gotten.
He's also pitting Midwest victims *against* PR victims, by falsely saying more aid to latter would take aid from former:https://t.co/YYcPL0qnXD
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) April 2, 2019
Lin-Manuel Miranda has also been a frequent critic of Donald Trump on his response to Puerto Rico, saying in 2017 that the president is “going straight to hell” after Trump blamed Cruz for poor leadership and implied that she was responsible for the death and destruction that the island experienced after the storm.
