Anthony is a singer, and he’s articulated the common sentiment of a lot of people. The Hill:
Federico de Jesús, a former deputy director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration — the island’s representation in Washington — told The Hill in an email that Trump’s “focus on the NFL instead of the emergency in Puerto Rico is appalling.”
“Puerto Rico is not getting all it needs,” said de Jesús. “Countless seniors and others don’t have their medicine. Most people need generators for power. Hospitals especially. Telecommunications are down and entire towns are incommunicado.”
“[Hurricane] Katrina is nothing compared to this,” he added.
“Rather than worrying about football players protesting the national anthem, the president needs to focus on ensuring maximum federal resources are being used to assist American citizens in Puerto Rico who are reeling from Maria,” Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) told The Hill.
“Times of crisis demand effective leadership and I can only hope the president lives up to that responsibility.”
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) piled on, decrying Trump’s focus on protesting athletes while “not bother[ing] to lend a minuscule amount of support” for the storm victims.
“The disaster relief funding that Congress has appropriated is not nearly enough to provide relief following the devastation,” he said.
Even prominent Republicans are speaking up:
Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, urged Washington policymakers to “put aside controversies [and] prioritize rescue.”
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Monday promised a quick response to help Maria victims, vowing that Congress will “make sure they have what they need.”
Hurricanes have been lined up and hitting the country like a conga line and the Current Occupant tweets. But Huckabee Sanders tells us not to worry:
“I certainly don’t think that talking about the American flag is a distraction.”
“It really doesn’t take that long to type out 140 characters, and this president is capable of doing more than one thing at a time and more than one thing in a day.”