Trump Needs to Answer for Deaths in Puerto Rico

Richard Wolffe/The Guardian

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. At the start of this year’s hurricane season, it’s already clear that the Trump administration has gone mad.

This is a collective sickness that extends far beyond the very stable genius at the top of the executive branch. And it matters far more than whether Trump himself cares about the lives of American citizens, or can be bothered to tweet about them.

For this is a group of so-called leaders who ran the most powerful government in the world while at least 1,400 – and more likely as many as 5,000 – of their own citizens died on their watch.

You wouldn’t know it by listening to them talk at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) headquarters this week. Donald Trump told Brock Long, Fema’s administrator, that he had done an awesome job presiding over a post-hurricane recovery that was so incompetent that several thousand Americans died from a lack of medicine, food, water and power.

“We really appreciate the job you’ve done,” Trump said in front of the TV cameras. “It’s been amazing, and you really have kept quite busy, I would say, unfortunately. We had no choice. We were hit hard. But you’ve done a fantastic job.”

A fantastic job of watching thousands of Americans die. Not in the high winds and floods, but in the disastrous aftermath, when Fema and the federal government were the most powerful people in Puerto Rico. A heckuva job, as George W Bush would say.

This isn’t just Trump ignoring reality. It’s his whole administration, refusing to look at their catastrophic failures and refusing to learn from them.

“We are marshaling every available resource to ensure maximum preparation for rapid response. That’s what we had last year,” Trump claimed.

Seriously? There’s nobody in the disaster response business, and nobody in Puerto Rico, who thinks there was maximum preparation for, or rapid response after, Hurricane Maria.

“Disaster response and recovery is best achieved when it’s federally supported, state-managed and locally executed,” Trump said, reading someone else’s words. “You agree with that, I think, Brock, right? This is really the great model that we’ve built, and there’s no better model anywhere in the world.”

Trump and his Fema leadership are deluding themselves if they really believe a great model is one that leaves thousands of Americans dead.

They are also engaged in an epic case of passing the buck by claiming that it’s really up to the state and local leaders to get stuff done when an economy is wiped out by a Category Four hurricane that destroys the entire power grid and communications network.

This is Fema’s official position about Puerto Rico: they are just playing a supporting role. But what if there’s nobody effective to support, which was also true in New Orleans? What if Americans are dying and the only people who can step in are the feds?

If only water bottles were really a joke in Puerto Rico, where Americans were drinking rainwater after the hurricane.

Don’t expect any insight from Mike Pence, who was himself a governor until 18 months ago. The vice-president is now a mini-me who bizarrely thinks he needs to copy the weird tics of his boss, like abruptly making a water bottle disappear from view in the Fema meeting. For this alone he has become the butt of a nation’s jokes, including on the normally respectful sets of local TV news in the heartland.

If only water bottles were really a joke in Puerto Rico, where Americans were drinking rainwater after the hurricane.

“Karen and I saw firsthand the extraordinary, at times sacrificial, efforts made by public servants here at Fema and all of the broad range of agencies that addressed those 4.7 million Americans that ended up requesting assistance,” Pence said.

You know what’s really sacrificial? The suffering of the Americans in Puerto Rico.

Of course, even all this empty talk of sacrifice was abruptly set aside when the cameras left the room. According to a leaked audio recording, Trump couldn’t keep his attention on hurricane season, preferring to brag about his own negotiating skills and the election results in California.

Heckuva job, Trumpie.

None of this federal insanity absolves the island’s government, or its mayors, from their responsibility for the preventable deaths after Maria. There’s been no accounting for what happened inside the island’s government. Instead, until last week, the administration of Governor Ricky Rosselló clung on to the ludicrous notion that the death toll was just 64.

Presumably anything higher would have prompted some awkward questions, like: how the hell did that happen and what did you do to save lives?

The death toll in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria is now at least as great as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, according to the island’s health department. But researchers from Harvard estimate the number is more than three times that disaster, making it a greater loss of life than the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

After both events, the total amount of investigation, oversight, academic study, journalistic output and political debate was overwhelming. The 2001 terrorist attacks changed our worldview forever and transformed George W Bush’s reputation. Of course, that reputation changed once again after Katrina, when his presidency was all but finished: if he couldn’t save an American city after a hurricane, how could he hope to deal with the rest of the world?

But after Hurricane Maria, there’s been nothing remotely comparable. The news media abandoned the island after a few days, when the Las Vegas massacre took place, and barely returned. Even though the real disaster in Puerto Rico took place over the many weeks that followed the hurricane.

When the Harvard study emerged last week, it was quickly buried under the mountain of coverage about Roseanne’s tweets. Because what could be more important than a prime-time sitcom?

This distraction lets those responsible off the hook. Without media scrutiny, there is nobody to ask the questions that remain unanswered: why did so many people die unnecessarily in Puerto Rico, and what has changed to prevent more deaths next time?

Congress certainly isn’t asking those questions. Republicans on the House oversight committee refuse to subpoena Fema to understand how so many huge contracts failed. Long has only testified once before Congress about the response to Maria. It’s hard to fathom how Republicans who were so fascinated by Benghazi can barely muster any interest about Puerto Rico.

Of all the scandals that threaten the future of the Trump administration, if not the freedom of some of its officials, there is none greater than the loss of thousands of American lives in Puerto Rico. Not Russia, and not corruption.

Even more important than the election of 2016 is the government of 2017. It’s time we reclaimed our sanity. It’s time we focused on saving American lives, and honoring those who died so needlessly just six months ago.