President Donald Trump jokingly scolded Puerto Ricans shortly after he landed on the devastated island Tuesday to survey damage from Hurricane Maria.
“I hate to tell you Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack,” Trump said to local and federal officials in Carolina. “But that’s fine.”
Trump also pointed out that Hurricane Maria’s 16-person death toll was low compared to Hurricane Katrina which killed 1,833.
“Every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here, with a storm that was really, totally overpowering — nobody’s ever seen anything like this — and what is your death count as of this moment? Seventeen?”
A man responded, telling Trump 16 had perished.
“You can be very proud, 16 people versus in the thousands,” Trump said.
Trump has praised his administration’s response to the deadly hurricane, saying they did an “A+ job.”
