Lost weekend: How Trump’s time at his golf club hurt the response to Maria
At first, the Trump administration seemed to be doing all the right things to respond to the disaster in Puerto Rico.
As Hurricane Maria made landfall that Wednesday, there was a frenzy of activity publicly and privately. The next day, President Trump called local officials on the island, issued an emergency declaration and pledged that all federal resources would be directed to help.
But then for four days after that — as storm-ravaged Puerto Rico struggled for food and water amid the darkness of power outages — Trump and his top aides effectively went dark themselves.
Trump jetted to New Jersey that Thursday night to spend a long weekend at his private golf club there, save for a quick trip to Alabama for a political rally. Neither Trump nor any of his senior White House aides said a word publicly about the unfolding crisis.
Trump did hold a meeting at his golf club that Friday with half a dozen Cabinet officials — including Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, who oversees disaster response — but the gathering was held to discuss his new refugee travel ban, not the hurricane. Duke and Trump spoke briefly about Puerto Rico, but did not talk again until Tuesday, an administration official said.
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“The Trump administration was slow off the mark,” said Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.), the first lawmaker of Puerto Rican descent elected by the state of Florida to Congress. “. . .We’ve invaded small countries faster than we’ve been helping American citizens in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.”
White House: ESPN’s Jemele Hill should be fired for calling Trump a ‘white supremacist’
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday struck back at ESPN host Jemele Hill for referring to President Trump as a “white supremacist,” calling the comment “outrageous” and saying she should lose her job.
Asked about Hill's tweets Monday evening, in which the sportscaster also said Trump's rise was “the direct result of white supremacy,” Sanders responded: “That's one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make and certainly something that I think is a fireable offense by ESPN.”
ESPN scolded Hill, who is African American, in a public statement distancing the network from her remarks, but it has not suspended her from her co-hosting gig on “SportsCenter.” The network, which has been accused by far-right conservatives of being too openly liberal with its politics, called Hill’s tweet “inappropriate” and noted her comments do not “represent the position of ESPN.”
In her tweets, Hill wrote that “Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime.” She said his “rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period,” and that he is “unqualified and unfit to be president. He is not a leader. And if he were not white, he never would have been elected.”
Sanders said she did not know whether Trump was aware of Hill's comments.
Trump has faced widespread criticism for his handling of the violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that resulted in the death of a counterprotester. The president did not immediately denounce the specific hate groups, including the KKK and neo-Nazis, which had organized the event, and he continued to equivocate even after condemning them, later saying there were “very fine people” on both sides.
Trump met privately at the White House on Thursday with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is African American, about the aftermath of the Charlottesville incident.
Sanders asserted Wednesday that Trump has been clear in his condemnation of hate groups.
Asked why Hill and her supporters don't think so, the press secretary said: “I know that the president has met with people like Senator Scott who are highly respected leaders in the African American community. He's committed to working with them to bring the country together. I think that's where we need to be focused — not on outrageous statements like that one.”
In case you ever wondered about the way (some) correctional officers see their inmates, I lead you no further than to Caddo Parish, La., Sheriff Steve Prator, who is ranting and raging mad about new criminal-justice reform laws that will go into effect next month—because it will mean getting rid of cheap labor.
But don’t take my word for it, hear them come from Prator’s own mouth.
According to KSLA, Prator expressed his “concerns” about the Justice Reinvestment Act, scheduled to go into effect next month, because it would provide for the early release of thousands of inmates across the state, including 192 felons in Caddo Parish in the first wave, or so he says.
“There’s ways and things that need to be reformed on the criminal-justice system, but certainly we don’t need to do what we’re about to do,” said Prator.
The Justice Reinvestment Act is made up of 10 bills that were passed by the state Legislature and then signed by Gov. John Bel Edwards in June, in the hopes of changing Louisiana’s reputation as the most-imprisoned state in the country.
It is the hope that the act will reduce the state’s prison population by 10-12 percent and save some $262 million over the next 10 years.
To Prator, it’s all a waste.
“Simply put, the state of Louisiana is risking our safety for bragging rights and to save money,” he said.
But Prator later would show his whole ass, showing that he really doesn’t care about safety or bragging rights. He is concerned, it would seem, about saving money, but only in the form of cheap or free labor.
“The [prisoners] that you can work, the ones that can pick up trash, the work-release programs—but guess what? Those are the ones that they’re releasing!” Prator fumed in a video clip tweeted out by Shaun King. “In addition to the bad ones… they’re releasing some good ones that we use every day to wash cars, to change the oil in our cars, to cook in the kitchen, to do all that where we save money, well, they’re going to let them out!”
