Does Donald Trump even know that he’s responsible for Puerto Rico?

A dependency is entitled to depend on the mother country’s help. The clue is there, cunningly hidden, in 'dependency'

Matthew Norman
Tuesday 26 September 2017 17:25 BST
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It's been a rocky week for the President
It's been a rocky week for the President

The death of satire has been greatly exaggerated times beyond counting since Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, but sometimes it does seem to be on life support.

Last November, during the furore about Mike Pence being booed at the musical Hamilton, a sub-sub-The Onion online journal reported Donald Trump demanding the deportation of a Puerto Rican cast member.

The joke there was that the President had no idea the Caribbean island was an American dependency, and that its 3.4 million inhabitants were natural-born US citizens.

Readers who failed to discern any humorous intent needn’t beat themselves up. Distinguishing satire from fact is a futile task in the age of Trump. Ten months later, judging by his five-day silence on the terrible damage inflicted by Hurricane Maria, and the incalculably callous tone in which he broke it, Trump is indeed unaware that Puerto Rico belongs to the US.

“Texas & Florida are doing great,” he tweeted on Monday, “but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble...” The implicit contrast between the quality of emergency response in real America and on some poxy little foreign island could not be clearer. His response to the “apocalyptic devastation” on Puerto Rico has the empathetic sincerity of the graveside Tony Soprano muttering “Whadda ya gonna do?” to the widow of a wise guy he’s just had wasted.

It’s been a busy week even by Trump standards. Within days, he has threatened North Korea’s obliteration to a startled UN; endured by the anthem-kneeling protest of the NFL stars (and Stevie Wonder); and discovered that at least six top advisers, including his daughter and son in law, have used private email accounts – the alleged criminal offence that led him and rally crowds to chant “lock her up!”.

Donald Trump discussing 'feeling Melania up in public' on The Howard Stern Show in 1999

Today, meanwhile, tapes from the Howard Stern show unearth him casually confessing to “feeling up” Melania in public. Obviously these are old tapes. The only First Lady body part he grabs in public these days, then gingerly, is her hand for a manly shake.

Yet among this latest meteor shower of embarrassments, the ignorance about Puerto Rico may be the brightest shard. Say what you like about Theresa May as she clings to the life raft of power – if a tropical storm destroyed Guernsey she wouldn’t need telling it was her business to help. Barbuda, not so much. You can, if you’re a cynical horror, ignore human tragedy an island that long ago became independent. But a dependency is entitled to depend on the mother country’s help. The clue is there, cunningly hidden, in “dependency”.

Puerto Ricans without homes, water, food and electricity will be irked to learn that they cannot depend on a President who either doesn’t comprehend that he is their President or is playing dumb.

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In another tweet, he acknowledged that “much of the island was destroyed”, but tartly added that the island’s electrical grid was failing before the storm and that it owes billions to Wall Street banks – a state of affairs that is anathema to him, as everyone knows, but soooo typical of a scrounging third world hell hole with a begging bowl on its flag.

In Trump’s defence, he is not alone. A recent poll found that 47 per cent of Americans are not aware that Puerto Rico is part of America, primarily because it is not a US state. It exists in a strange nexus somewhere between independence and statehood. The populace can vote in presidential primaries but not for President.

Every so often it has a referendum, and votes for statehood. The last one was in June, when 97 per cent opted to become the 51st state. The current administration has ignored that knife-edge result, citing low turnout, and no wonder. These 3.4 million dark-skinned, poverty-racked Hispanics, in a country somewhere down there between Antigua and Hispaniola, are hardly natural Trump voters. Besides, the present arrangement is indecently perfect. America owns Puerto Rico without feeling obliged to pay its bills. That’s been the Trump business strategy these past 40 years.

Tens of thousands are evacuated as Puerto Rican dam fails

If Puerto Rico had become the 51st state in 1998, the world would be unrecognisably different today. By population it would have seven electoral college votes. Assuming it gave them to Al Gore in 2000, he’d have beaten George W Bush 273-271. No war in Iraq, no domino effect from that, the US leading the global rearguard against climate change, and there would almost certainly be no President Donald J Trump.

We can play the counterfactual history game with Puerto Rico, as with the millions of other what-ifs. But the fact is that with Trump, as with Bush before him, the ignorance that staggers the world is a domestic asset. Among the reasons Gore and John Kerry lost to Dubya is the American distaste from the smartest kid in the room. They preferred the dummy who spoke their language to the clever guy who made them feel inferior.

Trump once said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue without losing support. The same goes for shooting his mouth off to reveal the unfathomable depths of his ignorance. If he went on Jeopardy, and to the question “Europe’s largest economy” he answered “What is Djibouti?”, his approval rating would nudge up a couple of points.

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