Trump Rates His Own Hurricane Maria Response A 10 While Tossing Paper Towels To Puerto Ricans, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Federal Disaster Relief Still Had To Be Graded By Someone Other Than The President

GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico. Wading into a crowd of Americans whose island had gone nearly two weeks without power, drinking water, or reliable communication, President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday confronted the humanitarian catastrophe the only way the moment seemed to demand, by picking up rolls of paper towels and lobbing them into the assembled survivors like a man feeding ducks. Aides described the stop at a relief center inside Calvary Chapel as a triumph, and the President, asked to assess his administration's handling of Hurricane Maria, awarded it a perfect score. "I'd say it was a 10," he told reporters, resolving a long-standing concern that the quality of federal disaster relief might otherwise have to be judged by the people receiving it.

The President had arrived having already established the proper frame for the disaster. At a briefing earlier that day he compared Maria favorably to past storms, observing that Puerto Rico had been spared what he called "a real catastrophe like Katrina." He cited an official death count of 16, contrasted it with the "literally thousands" lost in 2005, and encouraged local officials to feel "very proud" of the comparatively modest figure. The number 16 would not survive contact with the following year.

In the months after the visit, the recovery proceeded at the stately pace the situation could not afford. Much of the island remained dark into 2018, in what became the longest blackout in American history, while a two-employee energy company from the Montana hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke received a roughly $300 million contract to rebuild the power grid, an arrangement cancelled only after reporters asked how it had come to exist. Federal aid arrived slowly, was disbursed slowly, and was, at several points, slowed further from Washington.

The next August, a study commissioned by Puerto Rico and conducted by researchers at George Washington University estimated that roughly 2,975 people had died as a result of the storm and its aftermath, a figure the territorial government formally adopted. Presented with an official count of dead American citizens, the President elected to dispute it. "3000 people did not die," he wrote, attributing the estimate to Democrats who, he said, had inflated it "in order to make me look as bad as possible." The statement marked a rare instance of a commander in chief openly negotiating with a death toll.

Throughout, the President maintained that the true obstacle to recovery was the disposition of Puerto Ricans themselves, whom he described as wanting "everything to be done for them," and he reserved special criticism for the mayor of San Juan, who had requested assistance with what he considered insufficient gratitude. Officials would later report that the President had privately floated the idea of selling or trading the island outright.

At press time, the President was reviewing footage of the paper-towel toss and had determined that, on reflection, it too had been a 10.