Did Trump Say Some Very Inappropriate Things In Puerto Rico Or Nah?

A lot packed into this 66-seconds so let’s take a look. “I hate to tell you Puerto Rico but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack” is not a great soundbite after Peurto Rico’s entire island was wrecked by a giant hurricane. That is a fact. You know what else is a fact? Puerto Rico threw the budget out of whack after they were wrecked by a giant hurricane. The truth hurts and President Trump delivered the truth. I don’t know for sure but I would guess Puerto Rico did not want to throw the budget out of whack. I’d guess they did not want to get smoked by a giant hurricane. I’d guess they are just an island surrounded by water, ocean water. But facts are facts and Puerto Rico threw the budget out of whack. Fact.

It’s also a fact that Trump was being playful with this comment, following it up with “because we’ve spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico, and that’s fine, we’ve saved a lot of lives.”

Another fact? We prefer 0 deaths but 16 deaths is better than thousands of deaths. Don’t tell twitter that.

This actually infuriates me. Pfeiffer is quote-tweeting a misleading Vox tweet; “your hurricane isn’t a ‘real catastrophe’ like Katrina” is not what Trump said. He also did not say “only 16 deaths,” as Christina Wilkie tweeted.

Here’s the full quote, transcribed by yours truly for context:

Trump: “every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina and you look at the tremendous, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here with a storm that was just totally overpowering, no one’s ever seen anything like this, and what is your death count as of this moment?

Gov. Ricardo Rosselló: “16 certified.”

Trump: “16 people certified, 16 people, versus in the thousands, you can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people working together. 16 versus literally thousands of people, you can be very proud, everybody around this and everybody watching, can really be very proud of what’s taking place.

Look, there’s no argument from me that Trump doesn’t always choose his words carefully. There’s no argument from me that Trump is some perfect person whom with you cannot find flaw. He’s got all sorts of flaws and I’ve been very hard on him when I’ve felt necessary. There is still much aid needed in Puerto Rico and the death count will go up significantly.

But these types of misrepresentations are annoying, dishonest and distracting. This narrative that he said awful things in Puerto Rico is all over the internet. They present it like he blamed Puerto Rico for messing up the budget and like he shrugged off 16 deaths as insignificant.

He didn’t. He was quite clearly joshing around with the budget comment — as you can tell by the reactionary giggles — and he was clearly saying Puerto Rican authorities and people should be proud of the fact that their work and efforts prevented more damage and loss of life from occurring. And he quite literally said, “every death is a horror.”

Sure, those quotes, taken out of context, can look terrible. Insensitive. Out of touch. You can argue he shouldn’t be joshing around with people at this time. But it’s up to many of the very people and accounts presenting the quotes that way to provide said context so people simply browsing headlines or tweets can understand better what their President is actually saying.

This is precisely why Trump versus the media plays so well for Trump. And he knows it.