Yesterday, Paul Ryan was on MSNBC-- not with one of their normal anchors, but with far right resident loon Hugh Hewitt. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they decided Trump has sympathy for the victims of the hurricanes. "I have talked to him about these things," said Ryan. "He has tremendous compassion... He is flying to these emergencies as soon as he can without jeopardizing responses. He is stopping what he's doing. We have talked about the supplementals, these issues. The people who are suffering from these tragedies are in his mind front and center." Well, that isn't true. He golfed his way through the first week of the catastrophe in Puerto Rico, taking time out to call the victims lazy and to savagely attack the mayor of the island's biggest city. It's probably what inspired Jonathan Lemire and Julie Pace's moderately-worded AP headline yesterday: Expressing empathy remains a challenge for Trump. "As the death toll from the shooting in Las Vegas rapidly rose," explained Lemire and Pace, "White House officials urged President Donald Trump to show restraint in his response: No speculative tweets, please. No over-the-top bluster. White House chief of staff John Kelly encouraged a simple tweet of condolences. Aides wrote somber remarks that had Trump quoting scripture. Some around the president were encouraged to hear him connecting to the tragedy on a personal level-- talking about his property and calling friends there-- a sign he was taking in the impact of the event. The anxious counsel from his aides as Trump prepared to react to the largest mass shooting in U.S. history was a reminder of Trump’s troubled track record in such moments. Trump has often had difficulty embracing a central role of the American presidency: consoling people dealing with intense grief, regardless of their political affiliation or support for the White House’s agenda. It’s a quality that is rarely debated or analyzed on the campaign trail, yet one that can shape the way Americans view the success of their president." Kelly had good reason to be worried since Trump had already made a clown of himself in response to the catastrophe in Puerto Rico, primarily because Trump is a racist who has always had disdained for Puerto Ricans and has been hauled into court for refusing to rent federally-subsidized housing his company built to qualified Puerto Rican families. "Trump’s response to the devastation in Puerto Rico," they wrote, "has generated a raft of criticism."
In the first days after Maria, Trump was more focused on his feud with NFL players who were kneeling during the national anthem, blasting them in private to his allies and in public on Twitter. As images of the devastation in Puerto Rico began appearing more frequently on cable television, aides intensified their briefings, but Trump complained about the island’s debt and became fixated on the criticism from San Juan mayor’s, Carmen Yulín Cruz, according to three White House officials and outside allies.Despite the scenes of devastation around Cruz, Trump decided to hit back on Twitter, ignoring advice from Kelly and homeland security adviser Tom Bossert to focus on the recovery.The public has been watching.Just 32 percent of Americans approve of how Trump has handled disaster relief in the U.S. territory, while 49 percent disapprove, according to a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. On Thursday, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) called Trump’s visit to the island an insult.“When we see the president of the United States go to Puerto Rico throwing toilet paper, paper towels, what is that saying to the American people? It is an affront,” Lewis said.The president, however, believed his trip to Puerto Rico on Tuesday went well, according to a person who spoke with him after the visit. And friends say Trump, an unconventional president by any measure, was simply handling the situation in his own way.“I think he’s an old school John Wayne-type guy who doesn’t like to wear emotions on his shirtsleeves,” said Chris Ruddy, a longtime friend of the president and the chairman of Newsmax. “He doesn’t cry in public and he doesn’t like men who do.”Mayor Carmen Yulín CruzAfter Trump’s bumpy response to the Puerto Rico hurricane, top aides, including Kelly, scripted out a more measured response for the president after the shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday, which left 58 people dead. Trump largely followed the game plan, including avoiding public speculation about the motive of the shooter in a city where he owns a hotel that sports his name in giant gold letters. Trump consulted several friends from the city, including casino magnate and mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, about his response. He told aides he wanted to salute the law enforcement personnel he believes prevented the massacre from being worse.Trump often struggled as a candidate to exude the kind of empathy that comes naturally to some politicians. In the summer of 2016, aides tried repeatedly to explain to Trump why his attacks on Khizr Khan, a Muslim-American whose son was killed fighting for the U.S. military in Iraq, were off-putting to so many voters. One former campaign official said Trump was unmoved by arguments about the sacrifices Khan’s family had made for the country and couldn’t get past the fact that Khan had spoken out against the Republican nominee at the Democratic Party’s convention.His staff tried to limit small, potentially emotional gatherings with supporters, knowing that Trump preferred the distance of a large, roaring crowd. In October, as he made a last-minute push to win Florida, advisers prepped Trump about the gut-wrenching story of Miriam de la Pena, whose son’s plane was shot down by the Cuban government in 1996, according to another former campaign staffer.But Trump was far more focused on the endorsement he was set to receive later that day and, as de la Pena choked up recounting her tale, his eyes wandered around the room, only turning to say “very sad story” when the tearful mother finished speaking.Former advisers say Trump also appears to lack any understanding of the impact his often sharp-tongued tirades can have on aides. One adviser recalled being berated by Trump in the Oval Office, in front of multiple colleagues, in particularly humiliating fashion. The next day, Trump called the adviser on the phone and started joking as though the previous day’s outburst had never happened.
