(写真は、マケイン議員。トランプは載せるに値しないので却下）
トランプには心がない。善悪を判断する機能が脳から欠落している。
トランプは、カリブ海がマリアに襲われ、その後、４－５日経過するも、何の報告も
していなかった（ツィッターで）。この間に彼が行っていたのは、驚くべきことに、NFL
の黒人プレイヤーが国歌斉唱時に片膝をついて対応したことにたいし、罵声を浴びせかけ
続けていた。「彼らには愛国心がない。そういう奴はマネージャーは首にしろ！」的ツイートである。トランプは８月のシャーロッテビルでの騒乱にさいし、ネオ・ナチ、白人優先主義に肩をもつ立場を明確に明らかにしている。そしてその立場を崩すことはしていない。
そうした大統領にたいする批判をプレイヤーは示したのである。彼らは立派なアメリカ人であるが、それをトランプは否定する立場をとって、「愛国心」欠如云々である。トランプの愛国心が上記のようなものであれば、そうした愛国心が許容されるべきものではないことは自明の理である。
この問題を自分で作り上げているあいだにも、プエルトリコは電気、水道、建物など壊滅的な被害を受け、飲み水、食糧が枯渇するような状況に追い込まれ続けていた。そしてようやくトランプがツィートしたときには、例によって義理とウソの組み合わせで、対応していた。
ところが事実としては、きわめてトランプの対応は遅いばかりでなく、プエルトリコの惨状についてのべるべきところを、「これでプエルトリコは巨額の負債をウォール・ストリートにたいして負うことになった。これは何とかしなければならない」などと、言語道断のことを述べているのである。これにたいしては、さすがに多くの非難が、議員を含めて浴びせられている。
トランプが、最も非情というか、馬鹿というか、なんというか適切な表現が見つからないほどであるが、議員がジョーンズ法の停止をトランプに要請したにもかかわらず、トランプはそれを承認しなかったことである。この法は、海上物資の輸送については、アメリカ船籍のみが許される、というものである。この停止が認められないために、ただでさえ遅れている救援物資（当地の住民がひどい状況下にあることは、われわれにも分かる時代である）が届かない状況になっている。病院などは電気や水がないために、緊急患者は生死をさまよう状況に陥っているのである。
トランプに心がないのは、例のグラハム＝カッシディ法が上院を通過することができなくなったさいに、マケイン議員を公衆の前、およびツイッターで、「おまえのせいで通過できなかった」的非難を浴びせ続けていた。ここでトランプに心がない、というのは、マケイン議員は、脳にガンができ、それはかなりの重症のものである、という状況におかれているなかにあって、トランプはこうした非難を行っているからである。
マケインはベトナム戦争での英雄としてアメリカでは知られている。彼は５年間、捕虜となっていた。その途中にヴェトコン側から「あなたの父親の名声に免じて、釈放してやろう」ともちかけられたが、マケインは「部下と一緒にでなければ、断る」といって５年間、苦しい捕虜生活を続けた、という経歴をもっている。
マケインは、手術後も何事もなかったかのように、議員活動を続けている。
このことをめぐって、MSNBC の主要キャスターのジョーが、激しい非難をトランプに
浴びせかけている。下記のサイトを参照されたい。
Joe Asks: Who Raised The People That Boo Senator John McCain? | Morning Joe | MSNBC
MSNBC
2017/09/26 に公開
President Trump has continued his attacks on Senator John McCain over McCain's refusal to accept the GOP effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. Joe Scarborough critiques Trump's stance on McCain. » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc
Trump warned: send help or risk making
• President to visit Puerto Rico next week to see Hurricane Maria damage
• Trump tweets about island’s ‘massive debt’ despite growing crisis
Ed Pilkington in New York and David Smith in Washington
Donald Trump will visit Puerto Rico next Tuesday, to see some of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria on the lives of 3.5 million Americans. As the president announced the visit, however, one Democratic congresswoman who was born in Puerto Rico warned that his lack of attention to the disaster so far risked making it “your Katrina”.
Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria – in pictures
Read more
The White House said on Tuesday Trump had also made additional disaster assistance available, “by authorizing an increase in the level of federal funding for debris removal and emergency protective measures”.
But it took the president five full days to respond to the plight of the US territory. When he finally did so on Monday night, his comments on Twitter were so devoid of empathy it threatened to spark new controversy.
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Hot on the heels of the billowing
“Texas & Florida are doing
Where is Hurricane Maria heading? Mapping the storm's path
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Trump acknowledged that “much of the island was destroyed” but caustically went on to say that its electrical grid was already “in terrible shape” and that Puerto Rico owed billions of dollars to Wall Street and the banks “which, sadly, must be dealt with”.
The following morning, the president spoke to reporters at the White House before a bipartisan meeting on tax reform. Next Tuesday would, he said, be the earliest feasible day to visit the island, due to the extent of the damage. The island has been “literally destroyed”, Trump said, expressing confidence “they’ll be back”. The people of Puerto Rico “are important to all of us”, he said.
Federal authorities were landing relief supplies “on an hourly basis”, Trump said, adding that he will also stop in the US Virgin Islands, also severely damaged.
Later, at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden, he denied that he had been preoccupied with the NFL issue, insisting that the government has had “tremendous reviews” for its response, which now includes the military. “We understand it’s a disaster, it’s a disaster that just happened,” he told reporters. “The grid was in bad shape before the storm and Puerto Rico didn’t get hit by one hurricane; it got hit by two hurricanes; and they were among the biggest we’ve ever seen.
“We are unloading on an hourly basis massive
Trump added for emphasis: “Everybody has said it’s amazing the job we’ve done in Puerto Rico. We’re very proud of it and I’m going there on Tuesday.”
Trump’s Monday night tweets were the first comments he had made
But for many Puerto Ricans the reality five days after the hurricane struck was that the US president had not been with them. About 700 Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) staff
“At the same time that he was doing all of that, we had American citizens in Puerto Rico who are in a desperate condition,” said Hillary Clinton, Trump’s defeated opponent in the 2016 election, in a radio interview which aired before Trump’s late-night tweets on Monday. “He has not said one word about them, about other American citizens in the US Virgin Islands. I’m not sure he knows that Puerto Ricans are American citizens.”
The Trump administration has refused to waive federal restrictions on foreign ships carrying life-saving supplies to Puerto Rico – a concession it readily made
In the last of his tweets on Monday night, Trump said “food, water and medical are top priorities – and doing well”. On Tuesday morning, while continuing to tweet about the NFL, he wrote: “Thank you to Carmen Yulin Cruz, the Mayor of San Juan, for your kind words on Fema etc. We are working hard. Much food and
Members of Fema’s urban search and rescue team conduct a search operation in Yauco, Puerto Rico. Photograph: Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters
On the island, Governor Ricardo Rosselló, has warned that Puerto Rico is on the brink of a “humanitarian crisis”. In the hard-to-reach interior of the country, thousands are struggling with destroyed houses, a
Many Puerto Ricans desperate to return home to island reeling from disaster
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Earlier on Monday, Rosselló made a point of thanking George HW Bush and former Florida governor Jeb Bush for their calls of support.
Most Puerto Ricans were spared the experience of reading Trump’s tweets as a result of the total blackout. But condemnation was swift in mainland US. Juliette Kayyem, a former senior official in the Department of Homeland Security under Barack Obama, said Trump’s response showed “a lack of empathy of epic proportions”.
On Tuesday Nydia Velázquez, a Democratic representative from New York, said she was concerned that Trump’s continued tweets about NFL players showed he did not grasp the severity of the crisis. Referring to criticism of George W Bush following a hurricane that devastated New Orleans in 2005, she warned the president: “If you don’t take this crisis seriously this is going to be your Katrina.”
Velázquez also said she was “offended and insulted” by Trump’s tweet that Puerto Rico’s public debt contributed to the crisis.
Joe Crowley, another New York Democrat, said it was “absolutely ridiculous” for Trump to mention debt “when people are suffering and dying”.
“Here’s a president who’s used bankruptcy throughout his entire career,” he said.
• This article was amended on 26 September 2017 to show Jeb Bush was the governor of Florida, not Texas as an earlier version said.
＊＊＊
Donald Trump waives Jones Act to allow foreign ships to supply Puerto Rico
• US territory in dire need of relief supplies after Hurricane Maria
• Act mandating use of US-owned ships was suspended
•
Amanda Holpuch in San Juan
The White House on Thursday waived an act that was preventing foreign ships from delivering supplies to Puerto Rico, more than a week after Hurricane Maria devastated the US territory.
The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a tweet that Donald Trump had authorized the Jones Act to be waived for Puerto Rico at the request of its governor, Ricardo Rosselló. “It will go into effect immediately,” she said.
Sarah Sanders
At @ricardorossello request, @POTUS has authorized the Jones Act be waived for Puerto Rico. It will go into effect immediately.
September 28, 2017
The Jones Act requires goods sent between US ports to be carried on ships built, owned and operated by the US.
But lawmakers said it slowed the delivery of much-needed aid to Puerto Rico, where millions of Americans do not have electricity, adequate access to clean drinking water or a reliable fuel supply.
The law was suspended in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma to help ships reach Florida and Texas, but the president expressed reluctance to do the same for Puerto Rico.
“We’re thinking about that,” Trump said on Wednesday. “But we have a lot of shippers and a lot of people that work in the shipping industry that don’t want the Jones Act lifted, and we have a lot of ships out there right now.”
Hurricane Maria pushes Puerto Rico's struggling hospitals to crisis point
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The situation in Puerto Rico is dire – few of the hospitals are functioning and about 44% of residents are without clean drinking water, according to the US Department of Defense. There are food shortages and some isolated parts of the territory are still without functioning telecommunications systems. Cash is also running low on the island, where only a few banks are open and lines to withdraw money stretch for hours.
Lawmakers, including Senator John McCain of Arizona, had pushed the government to waive the Act.
McCain sent a letter to the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Elaine Duke, on
