The retired lieutenant general Russel Honoré, who once coordinated the military relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina had some choice words in response to President Trump’s unprovoked attack on the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“The mayor’s living on a cot, and I hope the president has a good day at golf,” Russel L. Honoré, who is credited with turning around the botched government response to the 2005 storm, told CNN on Saturday.
In an early-morning tweetstorm, the president lashed out at people in Puerto Rico who “want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.”
Trump criticized the “poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan,” who has been critical of the federal government’s response to the disaster. Just 4,400 American service members were participating in federal relief efforts in Puerto Rico eight days Hurricane Maria made landfall, compared to 8,000 U.S. troops that headed to Haiti in the first two days after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake in 2010.
“The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump,” Trump tweeted. “… Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.”
President Trump is spending the weekend at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey.