Puerto Rico angry at Trump official ‘goodnews’ remark

WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump pledged to help Puerto Ricans recover basic necessities and security in Maria’s ruinous aftermath as his homeland security chief tried to escape a tempest of her own making, set off when she called Washington’s response to the hurricane a “good-news story.”

Elaine Duke, the department’s acting secretary, drew a sharp rebuke from San Juan’s mayor for seeming to play down the suffering.

“When you don’t have food for a baby, it’s not a good-news story,” Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz told CNN on Friday. “Damn it, this is not a goodnews story. This is a peopleare-dying story.”

For his part, Trump said Puerto Rico is “totally unable” to handle the catastrophe on its own. “They are working so hard, but there’s nothing left,” he said. “It’s been wiped out.” He said the government is “fully engaged in the disaster and the response and recovery effort.”

Trump said he was not aware of Duke’s remark.

“I haven’t heard what she said,” he told reporters. “I can tell you this: We have done an incredible job considering there’s absolutely nothing to work with.”

Yet even in voicing solidarity and sympathy with Puerto Rico, he drew attention again to the island’s pre-hurricane debt burden and infrastructure woes, leaving doubt how far Washington will go to make the U.S. territory whole.

“Ultimately the government of Puerto Rico will have to work with us to determine how this massive rebuilding effort — it will end up being one of the biggest ever — will be funded and organized, and what we will do with the tremendous amount of existing debt already on the island,” he said. “We will not rest, however, until the people of Puerto Rico are safe.”

Earlier he tweeted: “The fact is that Puerto Rico has been destroyed by two hurricanes. Big decisions will have to be made as to the cost of its rebuilding!”