Elaine Duke was the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security for four months, after John Kelly left and before Kirstjen Neilsen was approved. During that time, she met with Donald Trump and others at the White House. She reports that she found herself in “an ambush” on her first visit, expecting to chat with Trump and instead finding herself facing down Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller, who demanded that she sign a memo ending DACA. Then Hurricane Maria struck and it really got nuts. New York Times:
She said that as Hurricane Maria approached Puerto Rico and Ms. Duke argued for an emergency declaration before its landfall, Mick Mulvaney, then the president’s budget director, resisted.
“Quit being so emotional, Elaine, it’s not about the people, it’s about the money,” she said Mr. Mulvaney told her. Asked about the comment, Mr. Mulvaney said on Friday: “I never made such a remark. My experience with the acting director was that she rarely got anything right at D.H.S. At least she’s consistent.”
Duke went on to say that she disagreed with the angry tweets that Trump then exchanged with the elected officials of Puerto Rico, as El Moron blamed delay and incompetence on local politicians, and complained that they weren’t appreciative enough of him and his efforts.
The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
The “island surrounded by water — big water, ocean water” as you may recall was a bit too much for Trump. So, in pure Trumpian fashion, he came up with one of his brilliant ideas and that was to sell the place, I mean, it was water damaged, right? If you had a pair of shoes like that, you’d ditch ’em, right?
“The president’s initial ideas were more of as a businessman, you know,” she recalled. “Can we outsource the electricity? Can we can we sell the island? You know, or divest of that asset?”
She said the idea was never seriously considered or discussed after that meeting.
Well, why the hell not, I would like to know? What good is having an island, if you can’t sell it? And sell all the people on it? Or, maybe sell them both separately. Sell the people to work for Vladimir at his place in Siberia and sell the island to a motion picture production company, let’s say, and then it could be used for Trump movies. You know that “Trump: The Motion Picture” is going to be a blockbuster. Maybe keep a few of the natives around for extras, right? Local color, brown people and palm trees.
Duke has an interesting observation:
“There is a singular view that strength is mean,” she said, “that any kind of ability to collaborate, or not be angry is a weakness.”
That is called “toxic masculinity” last I knew. Put it in a blender and mix with racism, misogyny and stupidity and you have a lethal concoction. Call it the MAGA martini. It pairs well with Big Macs and KFC.
And toxic masculinity comes directly out of the patriarchy playbook–it’s every-damned-where, not only here in the USA, just different iterations of it.
Sell Puerto Rico is so typically Trump–he did after all want to buy Greenland. Oh, nice, think about it, sell Puerto Rico, with all it’s Spanish speaking folks, many of color, and buy Greenland where almost everyone is white.
You connected the dots. And Trump would have been happy to use Puerto Rico as a trade in on Greenland. What an a$$hole.
Actually, in Greenland “almost everyone” is NOT “white.” The majority of the population is Greenlandic Inuit (what people used to call “Eskimos”) or Inuit-European mix. Only about 12% are “full” European.
El Moron likely confused Greenland with Iceland.
But srsly, do you think magatbrain has the remotest clue about those facts? If you said “Inuit” to him he’d probably think you were talking about sex. (and then he’d start thinking about Ivanka. Now I need to go wash my brain. ooog)
Christ and Eset, after the mess Trump made of PR, who the eff would want it? You’d be looking at years of cleanup, angry locals you’d have to pacify and rising waters that could wipe it out anyway.
Think way back to Cuba, and American business getting more and more involved in the place. Castro was a piece of shit who exploited the people of Cuba worse than American businessmen would have (and that’s saying something) but its location so close to FL made it ripe for economic exploitation with both farming and tourism.
Puerto Rico is a place where real estate and tourism honchos would love to have control. THAT I believe is why Trump was fine with the botched response to the hurricane. All he needed to be told was that there was all that beachfront property just waiting to be “developed” and he’d be lusting after a big chunk of it himself, but by driving the locals out or softening them up to accept just about anything to move somewhere else (not to the U.S. mainland of course but being American citizens even Stephen Miller couldn’t come up with a way to stop that) to get the ball rolling. One irony is that a lot of the displaced people wound up in FL. Being American citizens that means they get to vote in U.S. elections and for actual Representatives, Senators and even President!
I see all the polls with Biden doing well in FL and other places but I do believe things will tighten in the fall. It almost always does. An extra 100k or even 50k votes from people displaced from their homes on Puerto Rico could make all the difference in FL. Not that I want a 2000 repeat of things coming down to FL but there would be a delicious irony if it did and those people who would otherwise have voted from Puerto Rico instead casting ballots in FL and swinging the election to Biden! Especially since Trump changed his residency from NY to FL.
Reminder: COVID 19 may well screw with whatever expectations you’ve got in your head.
To Himself, everything is property to be bought or sold. Including “loyalty” and human lives.
I love your sarcasm.