President Trump: Hurricane Response in Puerto Rico was "An Incredible Unsung Success"; Interview with Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
COOPER: The president of the United States woke up this morning on a day of remembrance and also a day that a dangerous hurricane is on a collision course with the southeastern coast of this country and got on Twitter. His first tweet of the day was about himself and Hillary Clinton and Russia and a, quote, he apparently saw on Fox News. Quote, we have found nothing to show collusion between President Trump and Russia, absolutely zero, but every day we get more documentation showing collusion between the FBI and DOJ, the Hillary campaign, foreign spies, and Russians. Incredible. And he tagged a Fox News contributor and a Fox Business anchor. Now, that was just after 7:00 this morning. About nine hours later, the president tweeted about Hurricane Florence, posting a video of himself. Here's part of what he said when he spoke at the White House today.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are totally prepared. We're ready. We're as ready as anybody has ever been. And it looks to me and it looks to all of a lot of very talented people that do this for a living like this is going to be a storm that's going to be a very large one, far larger than we've seen in perhaps decades.</s>COOPER: Well, keeping 'em honest, we don't have to go back decades to see a dangerous hurricane. Maybe he was just talking about on the East Coast, but we don't even have to go back a full year. Just ask the people of Puerto Rico, the ones who survived, but lost loved ones, the ones who lost their homes, the ones who moved to the mainland when they lost everything. Last year, Hurricane Maria struck the island, it was catastrophic. Now we know that nearly 3,000 died in the aftermath, nearly 3,000 Americans. A death toll that the government has only recently acknowledged. The island has never fully recovered. There's no sense of when, or if that will happen. At the White House today, the president was asked as another dangerous hurricane has millions of Americans in its path once again, what lessons can be applied from what happened in Puerto Rico.</s>TRUMP: I think Puerto Rico was incredibly successful. Puerto Rico was actually our toughest one of all, because it's an island, so you can't truck things on to it. Everything's by boat. We moved a hospital into Puerto Rico, a tremendous military hospital in the form of a ship. You know that. And I actually think and the governor has been very nice, and if you ask the governor, he'll tell you what a great job. I think probably the hardest one we had by far was Puerto Rico because of the island nature. And I actually think it was one of the best jobs that's ever been done with respect to what this is all about.</s>COOPER: Incredibly successful, he called it, one of the best jobs that's ever been done. No mention of the nearly 3,000 Americans we now know died. He mentioned one Puerto Rican, the governor, and what a great job he supposedly thinks the president did. When talking about the America government's response to a natural disaster that caused a catastrophic loss of American lives, the president kind of created an alternative reality.</s>TRUMP: The job that FEMA and law enforcement and everybody did working along with the governor in Puerto Rico, with I think, was tremendous. I think that Puerto Rico was an incredible unsung success.</s>COOPER: An unsung success. Again, nearly 3,000 people died and the vast majority of those were people who died in the weeks and the months after the storm hit, dying because of a lack of access to medicine, electricity, attention, and care. Until recently, the government refused to acknowledge that the death toll was far greater than the official death toll of some 64 people. And in the days immediately after the storm, the president downplayed the scope of what had happened, saying it wasn't a real catastrophe, like Katrina.</s>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. If you look at the -- 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 just totally overbearing. Nobody's ever seen anything like this. And what is your -- what is your death count as of this moment? Seventeen?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sixteen certified.</s>TRUMP: Sixteen people certified, 16 people versus in the thousands.</s>COOPER: Well, now the government admits it is in the thousands, 2,975 is the official death toll in Puerto Rico. That's more than the 1,833 people killed in the Katrina aftermath and just two fewer than the number of people killed in the 9/11 terror attack 17 years ago today. Until today, it was difficult to imagine anything more shatteringly tone deaf than the president of the United States throwing rolls of paper towels at hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, which actually happened. And then nearly 3,000 people died and the president of the United States called the response an unsung success. In Puerto Rico, thousands of lives have come to an end, but inexplicably, the president's self-congratulation has not. Joining me on the phone is the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz. Mayor Cruz, I'm wondering, first of all, just what you have to say to the president tonight in light of his comments calling the response one of the best jobs that's ever been done.</s>MAYOR CARMEN YULIN CRUZ, MAYOR OF SAN JUAN (via telephone): Well, the president just keeps adding insult to injury. And I think his words are despicable. They really do not have any connection with reality and it just shows that for him, everything is about him and political posturing. The man has no idea. He has no solidarity, no sympathy, no empathy for anything that does not make him look good. Well, I'm sorry, sir, shame on you. You did not do a good job in Puerto Rico. If he thinks that 3,000 people dying on his watch is a good news story or is an unsung success, you know, nobody's going to be singing his praises, because this was a despicable act of neglect on the part of his administration.</s>COOPER: You know, one of the things that's often overlooked in the reporting on this death toll is that the government of Puerto Rico, and the federal government, stuck with this artificially low death toll of 64 people, and they actually made it difficult for reporters and researchers to get accurate statistics to determine what the real death toll was. CNN sued to get mortality statistics from the government of Puerto Rico. Harvard researchers said the government in Puerto Rico didn't give them access to mortality statistics and numbers that would have helped them in determining the real death toll months ago.</s>CRUZ: And you know, what's important about that is when somebody wants to lie about something and they know that the world has seen him for what he did not do, then somebody has to help cover them up. And unfortunately, most of the political class in Puerto Rico, when the president says jump, they say, how high? You know, in a humanitarian crisis, you should not be grading yourself, you should not be just having a parade of self-accolades. You should never be content with everything we did. I'm not content with everything I did. I should have done more. We all should have done more. But the president continues to refuse to acknowledge his responsibility and the problem is that if he didn't acknowledge it in Puerto Rico, god bless the people of South Carolina and the people of North Carolina. If he doesn't learn from his mistakes, he's going to make them again and people are going to continue to die. Today, I had a very short conversation with the governor in North Carolina and the mayor of Wilmington City, just letting them know, we know how it feels. We know how much they're going to have ahead of them. And you know, not only our prayers, but it's time to pay it forward. If the president turns his back on the American people, the Latino population and the Puerto Rican Diaspora. So we have to be watchful going forward, but this is a stain on the president, with on his presidency, and the world has seen what he's done. He says he's done a good job when 3,000 people have died. Well, God bless us all if this man continues on this path.</s>COOPER: It is one thing if those 3,000 people or nearly 3,000 people had died immediately when the storm hit. That's a horrible act of nature and a horrible disaster. The fact is, though, that many of those people died in the weeks and the months, even, after the storm hit, because of a lack of access to medicine, to pharmacies, to hospitals, to electricity and things like that.</s>CRUZ: Mm-hmm.</s>COOPER: Those were deaths, some of which, perhaps even many of which, could have been prevented.</s>CRUZ: People that didn't have dialysis, people that didn't have access to just simple things like oxygen in hospitals, they could have been prevented, but in order to do something right, you have to be able to look at the truth and say, look, let's get it done. Brook Long said for some time that the United States did not get a very speedy time. And they took a long time to get off the ground. Well, when you're in the business of emergency management and you admit that it takes you a long time to get off the ground, you're admitting your failure. And unfortunately, when this failed, people lost their lives. Now, we need and are still in a very weak state in Puerto Rico. There's about 60,000 blue tarps or blue roofs. The suicide rate has gone up by 25 percent. The suicide attempts have gone up between 60 and 70 percent. You know, between 55 and 70 percent. It depends on who's doing the counting. But the thing is that we're not ready. And the president continues to not acknowledge the truth, perhaps because he cannot handle the truth. He failed, he failed the people of Puerto Rico and the world is watching. And the world saw him for what he is -- a man that doesn't get it and is incapable of getting it.</s>COOPER: Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, I appreciate talking to you tonight. Thank you very much. Joining me now to continue the conversation is Max Boot, Kirsten Powers, and Rick Santorum. Max, what do you think it is about this president that he seems incapable of admitting fault or at least acknowledging this huge death toll now, which makes this, you know, a storm of massive proportions?</s>MAX BOOT, COLUMNIST, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, Anderson, this is kind of his M.O. I mean, he oversold everything when he was in real estate, thought that admitting any mistake was weakness and would lead his critics to tear him down. He still won't admit any mistake and still claims that everything is wonderful, because he thinks he can snow people under. And there's a tendency, I think, when we talk about the Trump presidency to say, well, he hasn't really faced a crisis. And by saying that, we kind of give into his narrative, because as you were just discussing, he did face a crisis and he failed miserably. And it wasn't just a natural disaster, there was a GAO audit that was done which found that FEMA was not prepared. And that we know that instead of focusing on responding to the disaster, Trump was at his golf club in New Jersey. He wasn't focused on what was happening. And then when Mayor Cruz raised these issues, he insulted her. He accused her of poor leadership and then he said that people in Puerto Rico just want everything done for them, which is basically trafficking in these racist stereotypes about supposedly lazy Latinos. So, this is disgraceful and it's amazing to me that he has not been hurt more badly by his horrible performance during Maria.</s>COOPER: Senator Santorum, how do you see it? Does the president bear some responsibility for -- for the response in Puerto Rico?</s>RICK SANTORUM (R), FORMER U.S. SENATOR, PENNSYLVANIA: Sure. I mean, you know, the federal response is an important component of it, but as we all know, and as Max knows, the primary responsibility, the people who are most responsible for that response is not FEMA. FEMA is not a huge operation that can do all things. It is a thing that supplements state and local, in this case, the country of Puerto Rico, their response. And, of course, that was woefully deficient. And in the errors made by FEMA and the staff was, they didn't have enough to compensate for the situation -- the bad situation in Puerto Rico prior to it, particularly the electric grid, but also the inability of the Puerto Rican government to respond. So, yes, does he -- do they have blame? Absolutely, there's blame to be put on FEMA for not providing more help to an organization that needed more help. But to throw it all on the federal government, it's simply not fair. And it's a misreading of how emergency response actually happens.</s>COOPER: Kirsten, we saw this in Katrina. There was federal responsibility, there was local responsibility, local failures and state failures, as well. There were failures across the board. That's certainly, you know, I'm sure, is the case here as well. I'm wondering what you make of the president's comments today.</s>KIRSTEN POWERS, USA TODAY COLUMNIST: Well, regardless of that, his comments are not truthful or accurate or a fair representation of what happened. So to cast this as a success for anybody is just -- goes completely against all the facts that we just heard all the facts from the mayor. So we're not just talking about a death toll, we're talking about enormous suffering, that's been ongoing, because of this and because of the response. And so, you know, I think that saying that Puerto Rico didn't respond well, OK, but let's just do a thought experiment. If this has been Houston, if this had been the state of Texas, I think that it wouldn't have mattered if they were not responding well. The federal government would have gotten more involved. Donald Trump would have not been golfing, probably. He probably would have been paying attention. I think the way he talks about this, there's a lack of decency and it's almost as if he has such a low opinion of Puerto Rico that this would be a success in his book, because this should be the best that they could expect.</s>SANTORUM: I -- Kirsten, I don't think that's fair. I think the reality is, yes, look, Donald Trump is not -- does not have a very high level of compassion, period. And he doesn't, as Max said, doesn't like to admit his mistakes. So let's just -- I accept both of those things. But to suggest that responding to a problem in Houston is the same as responding to a problem in Puerto Rico, which is logistically much more difficult to get resources to, it's just -- I just thought, it's not a fair thing to say.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Rick -- you know, actually, let's just -- it's an important point that the senator is making. I want both of you to be able to respond to it. We've got to take a quick break. We'll continue the conversation on that point. We're also keeping a close eye on Hurricane Florence, dangerous category 4 storm taking aim at the southeastern seaboard. Getting an update from North Carolina which could take a direct hit.