Trump Lobs Praise, and Paper Towels, to Puerto Rico Storm Victims
October 4, 2017 by admin
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And like his earlier travels, it had its peculiar moments: He also gently tossed rolls of paper towels into a crowd that gathered to see him at Calvary Chapel, outside the island’s capital, San Juan.
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Doug Mills/The New York Times
This time, however, Mr. Trump flew into a different kind of turbulence. Over the weekend, the president lashed out at the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, after she complained that the federal response in Puerto Rico had fallen short of the responses in Texas and Florida. She was not mollified after meeting him.
“The first part of the meeting was a public-relations situation,” Ms. Cruz said in an interview with CNN about the briefing she attended with the president. While she said the White House staff was helpful and receptive, Mr. Trump’s communications style sometimes “gets in the way.”
“I would hope that the president of the United States stops spouting out comments that really hurt the people of Puerto Rico,” she said, “because, rather than commander in chief, he sort of becomes miscommunicator in chief.”
Mr. Trump greeted the mayor but did not invite her to speak, recognizing instead Mr. Rosselló, who the president said “did not play politics,” and its congressional representative, who lavishly applauded the administration’s performance.
“Thank you, Mr. President, for all you have been doing for the island,” said Jenniffer González-Colón, the territory’s nonvoting representative, who declared that Washington had sent everything Puerto Rico needed.
“You were really generous,” Mr. Trump replied. “It’s so important when you have men and women that have worked so hard and so long, and many of them came from two other catastrophic hurricanes.”
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The president then went around the briefing table, praising the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, military commanders and a half-dozen members of his cabinet who accompanied him to Puerto Rico — which was already facing about $74 billion in debt even before the hurricane hit.
Amid Promises of Aid, a Puerto Rico Still in Ruins
President Trump said Puerto Ricans should be “proud” of the low death toll after Hurricane Maria. But a tour of the island by New York Times reporters showed that vast humanitarian and logistical challenges remain.
By DEBORAH ACOSTA and NATALIE RENEAU on Publish Date October 3, 2017.
Photo by Deborah Acosta/The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »
In singling out Mick Mulvaney, his budget director, Mr. Trump said, “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack.” Looking around the room for his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, who was standing in the back, Mr. Trump said, “Boy, is he watching.”
Before leaving the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Trump told reporters he believed Ms. Cruz was now mostly satisfied.
“I think she’s come back a long way,” he said. “I think it’s now acknowledged what a great job we’ve done.” He asserted that the relief effort was as effective as those in Texas and Florida, and he added, “It’s actually a much tougher situation.”
Mr. Trump, however, repeated his earlier criticism that some Puerto Ricans were not doing enough to help themselves. Despite the roads being cleared and communications being re-established, he said, truck drivers were not transporting enough supplies. “We need their truck drivers to start driving trucks,” he said. “On a local level, they have to give us more help.”
On Saturday, after Ms. Cruz angrily disputed the administration’s assertion that the relief effort was going well, the president fired back in a Twitter post that she had been instructed by Democrats to be “nasty to Trump,” and added that Puerto Ricans “want everything to be done for them.”
White House officials were nervous that Mr. Trump would be set off again if he were greeted by protesters in Puerto Rico. As late as Monday afternoon, some aides were urging the president to delay the visit, which came a day before he was scheduled to fly to Las Vegas to meet with law enforcement officials and victims of Sunday’s mass shooting there.
There were a few other signs of discontent on Tuesday. As Mr. Trump’s motorcade drove from an air base to a church — passing hundreds of downed trees — it also passed a woman clutching a placard that said, “You are a bad hombre,” according to a pool report.
Sitting in a traffic jam near the San Juan airport before the arrival of Air Force One, a resident, Jaime Vega, disputed Mr. Trump’s claim that Puerto Ricans should be doing more to help their own recovery. “We are doing,” he said. “It’s only now that they are doing something.”
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“Let him come so he can see what there really is, and so nobody can tell him made-up stories,” said Mr. Vega, an accountant.
Outside a bar in the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan, an hour after Air Force One departed Tuesday afternoon, people debated what Mr. Trump’s visit might have accomplished.
“He was just measuring Puerto Rico by the amount of dead compared to Katrina,” said José Tormos, 62, an employee of the local government in Guaynabo. “FEMA’s response has been too slow.”
Even before the death toll was increased on Tuesday evening, others noted that the actual number of people killed by Hurricane Maria may rise significantly, given that the earlier, certified tally was outdated and that the island government’s record-keeping ability has been damaged by the storm. Mr. Rosselló said 19 of the total 34 deaths so far were directly related to the storm, like drownings. The others included electrical failures of oxygen tanks, suicides and natural causes like heart attacks, he said.
Marlene Martinez, 51, an accountant, said, “It’s just an example of how we’re treated like second-class citizens.”
Others were more concerned about the reconstruction of the island and their own precarious situations than Mr. Trump’s comments.
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Doug Mills/The New York Times
“The people of Puerto Rico don’t care whether Trump is the god or the devil,” said Edgardo Tormos, 58. “This is about the recovery of Puerto Rico.”
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Still, others seemed happy just to have the president in their midst. In a 20-minute visit to Calvary Chapel, an English-speaking evangelical church that has become a collection center for supplies, Mr. Trump shook hands, took selfies and offered encouragement in the chapel’s sanctuary.
“For us, it’s really nothing political,” said Naitsa Marrero, an administrative assistant who helped organize the stop. “Puerto Rico needs help, and often this type of thing sheds light on what’s happening here — a crisis.”
Jason Dennett, the church’s pastor, said he welcomed the idea of a visit when the Secret Service contacted him five days ago. “He offered his help to the people of Puerto Rico,” Mr. Dennett said. “He said he was here to help and that the support would continue.”
Mr. Trump boarded a Navy amphibious assault ship for meetings with the governors of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. The White House asked the Virgin Islands’s governor, Kenneth E. Mapp, to fly to Puerto Rico because of the logistical complications of flying the president to those islands, parts of which have been severely damaged.
Still, Mr. Mapp told him, “because of your commitment, Mr. President, we’re talking about opening schools and welcoming cruise ships back.”
Mr. Trump has gotten used to being a kind of second responder, having traveled to Texas and Florida after two other hurricanes over the past two months. Since the weekend, Mr. Trump has sharply scaled back his Twitter posts about the hurricanes or other potentially charged issues.
But speaking to reporters on Tuesday, he continued to emphasize the government’s performance rather than the plight of the victims.
“In Texas and in Florida, we get an A-plus,” Mr. Trump said. “And I’ll tell you what, I think we’ve done just as good in Puerto Rico.”
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Kareem Hunt is the X factor the Chiefs have been waiting for
October 3, 2017 by admin
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — You can win a championship with Alex Smith, but Alex Smith is not going to win you a championship. Yes, there is a difference. A big one.
An athlete first and a quarterback second, Smith proved Monday night that, at 33 years old, he still has plenty of life in his arm and in his legs. As he was establishing the Chiefs as pro football’s best team in a 29-20 comeback victory over the Washington Redskins, Smith showed the toughness and wisdom shaped by a dozen years of hard living in the NFL.
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But Smith is not Tom Brady, nor is he Aaron Rodgers — the otherworldly franchise maker who was picked 23 spots after Smith in the 2005 NFL draft. Smith needs a special player by his side, someone who can carry the Chiefs when he can’t manage the load. The good news is it appears he has found that special teammate in rookie running back Kareem Hunt, who hasn’t slowed down since his record-breaking performance against the defending champion New England Patriots on opening night in Foxborough. As the late, great coach Hank Stram might’ve said, Hunt knows how to matriculate the ball down the field.
Hunt was relatively quiet for much of Monday night, at least by the absurd standards he has set as a kid drafted out of Toledo with the 86th overall pick. And yet, on the fourth-quarter drive that saw the Chiefs take a 20-17 lead, Hunt was the freshest and most physical player on the Arrowhead Stadium field. He caught a pass for 10 yards, broke a run up the middle for 17 yards, rumbled off the left guard for eight yards and then ripped off a huge 16-yard gain on second-and-20 from the Washington 40. On that possession, Hunt hurdled a diving, would-be tackler and put some ankle-breaking, Allen Iverson-esque moves on a couple of bigger defenders, all while operating in a space as confining as a phone booth.
“When I get my fifth step in the ground and get some head of steam and get rolling,” Hunt said, “it’s pretty tough to bring me down. So I was able to just make some people miss on the second level.”
Hunt cleared 100 yards against a Washington defense that allowed only 128 total yards last week against the Oakland Raiders. He finished with 101 yards on 21 carries and 121 total yards, joining Adrian Peterson, LaDainian Tomlinson and Billy Sims as the only rookies in NFL history to open their careers with at least four games of 100-plus yards from scrimmage.
Meanwhile, Smith was free to throw for a touchdown, run for a touchdown off a fake to Hunt and deliver the late fourth-quarter dagger on one of his patented athletic scrambles to his right, hitting Albert Wilson for 37 yards.
The kicker who was just called off the Carolina Panthers’ practice squad, Harrison Butker, nailed the decisive field goal before a Washington giveaway touchdown in the final seconds that inspired a lot of gamblers to book Tuesday morning appointments with their shrinks.
“What a heck of a game,” said Andy Reid, head coach of the league’s only 4-0 team. “A tribute to the National Football League and what they’re trying to do with giving each city an opportunity to be successful.”
Parity can be a beautiful thing, especially in the smaller markets. Everyone in the NFL has an equal-opportunity shot at winning a Super Bowl, so you can imagine what it would mean to Reid, who has been a head coach for 19 years, and to Smith, who has won only two postseason games as a former No. 1 overall pick, to finally win one. And to finally win one together.
Hunt could be the running back who makes it happen. He has a league-best 502 rushing yards; Todd Gurley, No. 2 on the list, has 362. Hunt strongly suggested he belonged in the same class with the big-name backs drafted ahead of him — namely Leonard Fournette and Christian McCaffrey — after he fumbled away his very first professional carry against the Patriots. Hunt hadn’t lost a fumble over four years and 782 carries at Toledo, and yet he recovered against the Patriots to finish with three touchdowns and 246 yards from scrimmage, a record for an NFL debut.
The coaches who knew Hunt best might have been shocked, but they weren’t surprised. Matt Duffy, his high school coach at Ohio’s Willoughby South, told ESPN.com on Monday that one major college recruiter who passed on Hunt once asked Duffy, “Where do you think he can play?” Duffy answered that question this way:
“Sundays. He’s going to play on Sundays.”
One recruiter told Duffy that Hunt — listed by the Chiefs at 5-foot-11 and 216 pounds — seemed awfully small on tape. Willoughby South fielded a formidable offensive line, including a 6-foot-6, 290-pound left tackle, and Duffy agreed that his star didn’t look like the kind of back you’d find at Ohio State. But Duffy said Hunt didn’t lose a fumble in about 600 carries over two years as Willoughby South’s primary ball carrier. In six years of high school and college ball, that would be no lost fumbles in nearly 1,400 carries.
“Recruiting in general is an art, not necessarily a science,” Toledo head coach Jason Candle, an assistant during Hunt’s recruitment, told ESPN.com. “You sign 20 [to] 25 kids every year and hope just one turns out to be what Kareem’s become. You’ve got to be emotionally stable, physically able, ready to handle the playbook, and Kareem was all of those things for us.”
Only the stopwatch said he wasn’t a burner. Hunt ran a 4.62 in the 40-yard dash at the combine. More than a few scouts neglected the fact that he runs a 4.42 on game days.
“It’s not track,” Candle said. “It’s football.”
Kareem Hunt is really good at football.
Both of his previous coaches described Hunt as a humble young man with a clear generosity of spirit. Reid added to that narrative after winning his fourth consecutive game, talking about his rookie “keeping a level head about him.” At his locker, Hunt spoke of team-centric goals and credited an offensive line that lost a starter, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, to an early knee injury. He also was effusive in his praise of his quarterback.
“He’s just such a great leader,” Hunt said of Smith. “He’s really good at maintaining the game, and he doesn’t really make any turnovers or any mistakes.
“He’s a great quarterback, he’s athletic, he could run, he could pass, he could do it all.”
49ers to the NFC Championship Game, and why he’ll likely lose his job to this year’s first-round pick, Patrick Mahomes II, sooner rather than later. Smith will be a free agent after the season. He has acknowledged that this could be his last shot in Kansas City.
But worse quarterbacks have won a Super Bowl ring, and New England’s putrid defense and the Derek Carr injury in Oakland have opened the door for the Chiefs in the AFC. Hunt has just opened it wider.
“It’s another dimension of the game that the defense has to try to stop,” Reid said. Hunt’s stunning production, the coach said, “helps all of us.”
Even the great John Elway needed help — which came from Terrell Davis — to win his two titles before he retired. Out of left field, a long way from Toledo, Kareem Hunt might be the player who gets Alex Smith his long, lost championship.