Watch A Furious Chris Cuomo Unload On A Republican Lawmaker Who Claims People Aren’t Dying In Puerto Rico

President Trump began Thursday by tweet-threatening to abandon Puerto Rico while the U.S. territory struggles through hurricane recovery. Trump reasoned that the military and federal government couldn’t stay “forever.” On CNN, Chris Cuomo asked Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) to defend Trump’s tweets, and Perry was thrilled to oblige. And for six minutes, the two men entered a virtual death match.

The conversation quickly grew testy but reached a fever pitch at around 3:00 after Cuomo pointed toward statistics (which FEMA removed from its website) about how many Puerto Ricans still don’t have electricity, food, or drinkable water. Perry yelled that Cuomo was “making this stuff up!” And then he denied that people are dying, although the official death toll sits at 45 and is likely to climb once communications improve. Cuomo calmly told Perry that he understood that the territory’s infrastructure presented a challenge, but Perry continued to lash out while demanding sources and real data:

Perry: “Quantify your claims, Mr. Cuomo. Quantify any of it. You can’t just make these claims and not put any metrics to it. Who is without, for how long? Who? How many people? Who are they?”

Cuomo: “You have less than half the country [sic] that has what you need to sustain life, without fresh water, power, food, place to live.”

Perry: “Mr. Cuomo, you’re simply just making this stuff up. You’re making it up.”

Cuomo: “How am I making it up? What am I making up?”

Perry: “If half the country didn’t have food or water, those people would be dying. And they’re not.”

From there, Perry took umbrage with Cuomo’s characterization of Trump’s tweets as “insensitive,” a term that Perry finds to be “inflammatory” and evidence of media bias. Perry also argued that Trump is very “sensitive” and committed to seeing Puerto Rico to full recovery, at which point the two men began to argue about the meaning of the word “forever.”

All of this — while apparently an unreconcilable mess — serves to back up FEMA head Brock Long’s recent admission that the agency is ignoring the pleas of San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz. For her part, Cruz responded to Trump’s tweets by accusing of him of being “incapable of fulfilling the moral imperative to help the people of PR. Shame on you!”

(Via CNN)