The Ugliness that is Donald Trump (and His Base)

Last night the Saturday Night opening skit summed up Donald Trump's view of America, some people and their lives matter and many do not.  Alex Baldwin delivered perfectly on Trump's view that Puerto Ricans are not "real Americans" when he said the line “We want to help you but we have to take care of America first.”  In Trump world, "Americans" are white, heterosexual, conservative Protestants who preach division and dislike, if not open hatred towards others that are different be it due to race, national origin, language or sexual orientation. That mindset is shared, in my view, by a majority of Republican elected officials and most certainly by must of the GOP base.  The live and weelbeing of small children or the elderly of other races or ethnicity simply do not matter.  Yet surely this morning many of theis Trump supporters will be packing church pews and underscore their total hypocrisy.  The truth is that not a single one of us had the least bit of influence on what race were born into, what country were born in, or even our sexual orientation according to modern medical and mental health knowledge (knowledge which is, of course, rejected by the ignorance embracing GOP base).  Two pieces in the Washington Post look at this sad reality.  The first looks at the SNL skit while the other looks at a true leader, the Mayor of San Juan.  Here are highlights from the first:

In the sketch, Baldwin’s Trump returns from a golfing outing in Bedminster, N.J., to take a call from the mayor of San Juan. “I’m sure she wants to tell me what a great job I’m doing,” Trump tells Sarah Huckabee Sanders, played by Aidy Bryant.

She does not. “I”m begging you. Puerto Rico needs your help,” says Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz (Melissa Villaseñor).  “I know that things are, as the locals say, ‘despacito,'” Trump says, adding that help will arrive by Tuesday, “Wednesday at the latest.” 

When Cruz tells him “that’s not good enough,” Trump responds, “Well you should have paid your bills.”

“Ma’am, I don’t know if you know this but you are in an island, in the water. The ocean water, big ocean with fishies and bubbles and turtles that bite,” Trump continues. “We want to help you but we have to take care of America first.”

Cruz asks, “Wait, you do know we’re a U.S. territory don’t you?”  Baldwin’s Trump contorts his mouth and holds it open for several seconds before stammering, “I mean I do, but not many people know that.” He then hangs up on Cruz after she asked for help again, and tells Huckabee Sanders, “Wow, that woman is so nasty.”

The second piece looks at Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and her efforts to save American citizens in Puerto Rico even as Trump's fat ass spent yet again at one of his golf resorts.   Here are excerpts:

She once went before Congress to ask that Puerto Rico — crippled by debt — be able to reorganize under bankruptcy laws, and thereafter enter into commercial agreements with other countries.

"Puerto Rico has been denied these tools far too long," Cruz said in 2015. "And as long as our options are defined by the powers of this Congress, we will always be at your mercy. The measure of our success will always be limited by the vastness of your control over our affairs."

Two years later, Hurricane Maria has made the island's many dependencies all too apparent.

Cruz worked nearly nonstop on the ground — walking the capital's streets and doing what she could for those she met. In an interview with a Washington Post reporter just three days after the storm, she described what she was seeing. 

"There is horror in the streets," she said at the time. "Sheer pain in people's eyes."  The city's hospitals had no power. Much of the country would not have electricity until 2018, she said. Looters were already taking over some streets after dark. The few residents who still had gasoline and drinking water were quickly running out.

"I know we're not going to get to everybody in time," she said. All she could do was try.  She said that on her way to talk to the reporter, a man had asked her for a favor: "To tell the world we're here."  As tears filled her eyes, Cruz obliged. "If anyone can hear us," she told the reporter, "help." 

Her people were resilient, she said. Residents had taken the streets back from criminal gangs. But if the federal government did not step up its response, she feared, "people will die."  "I don't know if Trump's comment shows an utter lack of understanding of the political situation in Puerto Rico, or if it's just a cover to rally his base," said Yarimar Bonilla, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. "It makes no sense. 

 

"Complaining about people on the island not having food, electricity, water is not partisan. That's just basic human necessity."

 

On Saturday, Cruz dismissed Trump's tweets with a smile. She was dressed in combat boots and cargo pants as she oversaw the distribution of supplies from San Juan.  "The most powerful man in the world is concerned with a 5-foot-tall, 120-pound little mayor of the city of San Juan," she said.

Asked whether there was anything political in her barbed remarks, Cruz denied it.  "I don't have time for politics," she said. "There is a mission, and that is to save lives."  Then in the middle of an interview, the mayor got a call about a generator catching fire at San Juan hospital. She quickly mobilized her staff, barking out orders like a general.  And, within minutes, she was rushing once more out into her city.

Contrast Trump with Cruz and decide who is the true leader who cares about their citizens.  I posit that it is not the foul bigoted, lard ass in the White House.