San Juan Mayor Rips Trump For His ‘Terrible and Abominable’ Tossing of Paper Towels at Victims

President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico on Tuesday to survey the damage on the island in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and to visit with officials to discuss the relief and recovery efforts. During his trip, Trump made headlines by telling Puerto Rico it was throwing the budget out of whack, comparing the death toll to that of “real catastrophe” Katrina, and tossing paper towels at victims when handing out supplies.

This evening, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz — yes, the mayor who Trump hate-tweeted last weekend — appeared on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss the president’s visit as well as her run-ins with POTUS. After telling guest host Joy Reid how her city is holding up, Cruz addressed her meeting with Trump earlier in the day and how he seemed to ignore her when she said the recovery’s not about politics.

“I said to him it’s about saving lives, it’s not about politics,” Cruz said. “And he didn’t respond. But this was a PR 17-minute meeting — there was no exchange with anybody, with none of the mayors.”

She then hammered Trump for the image of him casually tossing rolls of paper towels at Puerto Ricans during a photo-op.

“In fact, this terrible and abominable view of him throwing paper towels and throwing provisions at people, it’s really — it does not embody the spirit of the American nation, you know,” she exclaimed. “That is not the land of the free and the home of the brave that the beacon of democracy that people have learned to look up to, you know.”

Cruz went on to claim that Trump had been “insulting to the people of Puerto Rico” and call him the “miscommunicator-in-chief,” a label she bestowed upon him in a previous interview.

Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.

[image via screengrab]

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