Trump spent the next eight(!) hours tweeting a series of attacks against the so-called “fake news” media for allegedly misrepresenting the actions of his administration in Puerto Rico... Trump provided no evidence for his claims. Or, really, explained what he meant by them. CNN, for its part, has provided significant coverage of the recovery efforts — highlighting both stories of inspiration and the real struggles of many on the island to cope with the lack of electricity and increasing shortages of water and food.. None of that comes even close to Trump’s claim that the news networks are working to “disparage our great First Responders” or that the media is “doing their best to take the spirit away from our soldiers.”What Trump is doing — in his attacks on Yulin Cruz and the media — is trying to divide the country as a way to deflect blame for his administration’s performance.“They” are lazy and want everything done for them. “They” are being nasty because Democrats told them to. “They” aren’t rooting for our first responders. “They” are trying to convince people that our soldiers aren’t doing a good job.Trump’s willingness to divide, to turn every situation in which he is questioned or criticized into an “us” vs “them” is well documented by now. The 2016 election was an 18-month master class in how to divide the country for your own political gain. Trump’s handling of the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his deliberate decision to pick a fight with (mostly black) NFL players over the national anthem illustrate that same perpetual need to divide... That default divisiveness makes Trump different than every person who has held the office before him. For the 43 previous presidents, their ultimate goal was to find ways to remind people in the country of our common humanity, to take the high road, to appeal to our better angels. Many of them missed that mark — often badly — but it was always their North Star.It is not for Trump. Not close. For Trump, the lone goal is winning at all costs... 18 tweets. 11 hours. Full of blame, anger and victimhood. Totally devoid of hope, inspiration or unity.
Trump doesn’t get it on Puerto Rico. He just proved it by lashing out at San Juan’s mayor.
There has been anecdotal evidence that Trump doesn’t quite get it. He has repeatedly misstated the size of the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico. He has repeatedly talked about what a tough state the island was in to begin with — as if to shift blame. He has talked repeatedly about how Puerto Rico is an island “in the middle of the ocean” — as if to temper expectations. He has even talked about how Puerto Rico might be made to repay the cost of its recovery. And he’s decided to take a weekend at his golf club in New Jersey right now, even as the scope of the problems in Puerto Rico is growing.
Trump’s Deadly Narcissism
When Hurricane Maria struck, more than a week ago, it knocked out power to the whole of Puerto Rico, and it will be months before the electricity comes back. Lack of power can be deadly in itself, but what’s even worse is that, thanks largely to the blackout, much of the population still lacks access to drinkable water.
.. Until Thursday the Trump administration had refused to lift restrictions on foreign shipping to Puerto Rico, even though it had waived those rules for Texas and Florida.
.. although it’s more than a week since Maria made landfall, the Trump administration has yet to submit a request for aid to Congress.
.. Trump spent days after Maria’s strike tweeting about football players. When he finally got around to saying something about Puerto Rico, it was to blame the territory for its own problems
.. But while the Affordable Care Act survives, the Trump administration is openly trying to sabotage the law’s functioning.
This sabotage is taking place on multiple levels.
- The administration has refused to confirm whether it will pay crucial subsidies to insurers that cover low-income customers.
- It has refused to clarify whether the requirement that healthy people buy insurance will be enforced.
- It has canceled or suspended outreach designed to get more people to sign up.
.. These actions translate directly into much higher premiums: Insurers don’t know if they’ll be compensated for major costs, and they have every reason to expect a smaller, sicker risk pool than before.
.. the A.C.A. won’t actually collapse; it will just become a program more focused on sicker, poorer Americans — and the political opposition to repeal won’t go away. Finally, when the bad news comes in, everyone will know whom to blame.
.. A.C.A. sabotage is best seen not as a strategy, but as a tantrum. We can’t repeal Obamacare? Well, then, we’ll screw it up. It’s not about achieving any clear goal, but about salving the president’s damaged self-esteem.
The Meaning of ‘Despacito’ in the Age of Trump
Take “Despacito” itself. It begins with a steel-stringed Puerto Rican guitar called the cuatro, which most likely descended from an instrument brought to Spain from North Africa by Moors. The rolling reggaeton beat came out of Jamaica and, long before that, probably originated in West Africa. In rapping, Daddy Yankee employs an art form developed by urban African-Americans, infusing it with the unique feel of Puerto Rican Spanish and slang. Mr. Fonsi’s deliciously suggestive lyrics arguably belong to a tradition that stretches back to the lovelorn troubadours of medieval Spain, and beyond.
The song is a fusion, an amalgam. As such, it doesn’t just illustrate the genius of pop music but also serves as a model of how creativity works generally. Innovation often involves organizing old pieces into new configurations. Tech companies, like Apple and Google, know this. Hence their emphasis on cross-pollination — their open work spaces and public areas designed to encourage intermingling.
.. Then came President Trump and the news that some still viewed the United States as a fundamentally white, Christian nation with European roots. Which means what, exactly? Modern genetics tells us that Europeans are themselves a mixture of different peoples, a hunter-gatherer population mixed with farmers who, thousands of years ago, immigrated from what’s now Turkey (near Syria), topped off by herders from what’s now the Russian steppe. Christianity, the supposed glue of Europe, was imported from the Levant. And I’m writing this in a language — English — that consists of French and Latin grafted onto an Anglo-Saxon base, sprinkled with Old Norse and grains of Celtic.