https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/13/hurricanes
It’s Hurricane Katrina all over again.
Since the election of climate denier Donald Trump, the politicization of major hurricanes—along with a torrent of hysterical news coverage and blame-laying—is back en vogue. During last year’s unusually active hurricane season, the media, Democratic politicians and scientific activists claimed the devastating storms were Trump’s fault even though he had been president for less than a year; some suggested voters in the red states that helped elect Trump deserved to have their property destroyed or even to be killed. (The Washington Post editorial board already this week has blamed Trump for Hurricane Florence, currently churning in the Atlantic Ocean, headed for the Carolinas)
George W. Bush never politically recovered from the fallout of Katrina in 2005; the Left and NeverTrump are now following that successful playbook against the current Republican president.
That’s why the media and political class continue to rehash Hurricane Maria, which ravaged the island of Puerto Rico just over a year ago. They want this to be Trump’s Katrina. Amid the release of a scientifically questionable report last month that significantly raised the number of deaths attributable to Maria, Trump is again on the defensive about his culpability in the tragedy. In two tweets Thursday morning, Trump rejected the study’s estimate that 2,975 people died because of Maria-related causes, and that Democrats were using the dubious report to “in order to make me look as bad as possible.”
He’s right.
It’s been their strategy since Hurricane Maria started forming in the Atlantic last summer. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz spent days blasting the president in front of any news camera she could find after the Category 4 storm made landfall on September 20, 2017 as her poverty-stricken constituents struggled to recover. Cruz accused the president of an act of “genocide” for not responding quicker to Maria as supplies such as bottled water sat unused and undistributed in storage areas. Political pundits insisted Trump’s (allegedly) inadequate action was because he’s a bigot. (Cruz is now being condemned for politicizing the tragedy and is under investigation by the FBI for corruption.)