Donald Trump held an on-camera briefing in Puerto Rico in which he criticized the US territory for hurting his budget, praised the governor for giving him high grades, and said “it’s not about me” after asking a lawmaker to repeat praise she’d given him.
Said Trump:
“I hate to tell you Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack, because we’ve spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico. And that’s fine we’ve saved a lot of lives. 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 really a storm that was totally overpowering – nobody’s ever seen anything like this. What’s your death count? 16 people vs in the thousands you can be very proud….”
Pres. Trump: “I hate to tell you Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack, because we’ve spent a lot of money" pic.twitter.com/6gWfGy3p5r
— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) October 3, 2017
Some other quotes from the briefing.
“This has been a Category 5 which few people have ever even heard of. A Category 5 hitting land, and boy did it hit land.”
“General Buchanan got here a few days ago and there’s no doubt about it, you are a general. There’s a reason you’re a general, right? He’s no games. I said, ‘give me a general, I don’t want to have a general that plays games.'”
“Your governor has been, who I didn’t know, I heard very good things about him. He’s not even from my party and he started at the very beginning appreciating what we did….Governor I just want to tell you that right from the beginning this governor did not play politics. He didn’t play it at all. He said it like it was, and he was giving us the highest grades.”
“Congresswoman Jennifer Gonzales Colon who I watched the other day and she was saying such nice things about all the people that have worked so hard. Jennifer, do you think you could say a little bit what you said about us today. And it’s not about me…”
Watch the full briefing:
