https://youtu.be/tpoUOFesPwk
We’re now eight days into the crisis in Puerto Rico following the devastation from Hurricane Maria and the response from Donald Trump has been decidedly lacking. It was only just Thursday that the president waived the Jones Act to allow aide to flow freely to Puerto Rico, but previous to that that his most notable response had been to point the finger at the U.S. territory on Twitter. Meanwhile, he’s been focusing the bulk of his attention on the NFL for encouraging players’ rights to peacefully protest.
While chatting with Jimmy Fallon Thursday night, Rachel Maddow insinuated that Trump’s NFL response was no spontaneous outburst. “This was paired with an advertising campaign by a PACT that supports him,” she said. “It was followed up immediately with a fundraising effort that the RNC sent out telling people they should send money if they stand with Donald Trump on the NFL. This wasn’t him just popping off on Twitter.”
She continued, “He decided he was going to make a racially divisive issue out of something going on in sports. They planned on it, they built a whole campaign around it, and then he launched it.”
Maddow also made the point that whether or not you care what Trump thinks about the NFL, that it was “outrageous” that he spent the weekend tweeting about it while Puerto Rico was basically drowning. “Three and a half million Americans in Puerto Rico, and the president was really preoccupied with trying to make a racial issue out of the NFL while he wasn’t doing anything about that,” she pointed out. “And that, I think, is going to stick, and I think that’s going to be in his history, no matter what else he does.”