Political danger? All the time...

Trump faces political danger in visit to Puerto Rico

After tweeting against local officials, and as islanders continue to suffer, the president could get less than a warm welcome.

By MATTHEW NUSSBAUM

President Donald Trump on Tuesday will come face to face with the “politically motivated ingrates” he slammed on Twitter just days before.

The president will land in Puerto Rico after spending much of the past week boasting about a wildly successful response effort that hasn’t matched the reality of the hurricane-ravaged island and after picking a fight over the weekend with the San Juan mayor.

The visit comes as he’s also attempting to be soother-in-chief for the nation after a shooting in Las Vegas left at least 59 dead on Sunday night — the first time he’s had to navigate two disasters of national scope that are politically perilous for any president, but especially one prone to off-the-cuff riffs.

The Puerto Rico stop will mark only the start of emotionally charged travels for Trump this week. On Wednesday, he is scheduled to travel to Las Vegas to meet with the families of victims of Sunday’s massacre.

Trump struck a somber tone in his first public comments on the deaths in Las Vegas, decrying the “act of pure evil” and calling for unity. On Tuesday, though, he will trade the scripted and controlled setting of the East Room for a storm-ravaged island where more than half of the residents remain without access to drinking water and only 5 percent of the island has electricity.

He is slated to meet with first responders, storm victims and government officials during his time on the ground. It isn’t clear whether he’ll meet with those he’s attacked from afar.

Trump has courted controversy by blasting the “poor leadership ability” of Puerto Rican officials, who he said “want everything to be done for them.” Trump also said the island’s leaders “are not able to get their workers to help,” and he accused Carmen Yulín Cruz, the Democratic mayor of San Juan — who repeatedly slammed the Trump administration’s response to Hurricane Maria — of trying to score partisan political points by criticizing him.

“We have done a great job with the almost impossible situation in Puerto Rico. Outside of the Fake News or politically motivated ingrates,” Trump tweeted on Sunday.

All the while, he’s kept up an upbeat tone about the response. He told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that it’s “amazing what’s been done in a very short period of time.” He added: “There’s never been a piece of land that we’ve known that was so devastated.”

Other officials have echoed his attitude. “The federal government is doing everything within our powers and capabilities to first focus on the life-sustaining and life-saving measures as well as on the rebuilding process,” press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters on Monday.

Even with sourness from the weekend’s controversial tweets lingering, some see a reason for guarded optimism. Luis Fortuno, who served as the territory’s governor from 2009 to 2013 and is now a lobbyist in Washington, was working to deliver supplies in San Juan on Saturday morning when he received a call from Trump.

“The White House is already thinking of the next phase, the reconstruction phase,” Fortuno said in an interview. “I think that this time around they are thinking outside the box,” about more than just bringing Puerto Rico back to the infrastructure status it had prior to Maria.

But Trump will have to do more than just sing the praises of his own response to the storm.

“People don’t want to hear ‘Hey, we’re doing great,’ and they don’t want to hear, ‘Hey, we’re doing awful,’” said Tevi Troy, a senior George W. Bush aide who wrote a book, “Shall We Wake the President?”, about White House disaster response. What they want, Troy said, is concrete information about what’s being done to help them and how long it will take to get back to normal.

It’s an added bonus if federal and local elected officials show a united front, Troy added. He pointed to President Barack Obama’s famous visit to New Jersey with Republican Gov. Chris Christie after Superstorm Sandy days before the 2012 presidential election as evidence that such bipartisan accord is possible.

But while Trump had political allies at his side in Texas and Florida — where Govs. Greg Abbott and Rick Scott have been energetic supporters — he’s working alongside Democratic politicians who are for the most part strangers in Puerto Rico.

It is unclear whether Trump will meet with Cruz, the San Juan mayor. She has been invited to participate in Tuesday”s events, Sanders said Monday.

Trump appears to have learned lessons following his first visit to a disaster scene, when he was widely criticized for making a trip to Texas in the wake of Hurricane Harvey that didn’t involve actually meeting with — or even mentioning — any victims. In a subsequent trip to Texas and a trip to Florida after Hurricane Irma, Trump met with people directly affected by the storm, giving out hugs and supplies at shelters.

Trump’s White House received generally high marks for its handling of Harvey and Irma in Texas and Florida. But that narrative has changed as the full scope of devastation from Maria has come into view — and as Trump devoted his attention to picking a fight with the NFL over player protests during the national anthem.

“He seemed to be in full operational mode in Texas and Florida, and then his energy tapered off when it got to Puerto Rico,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.

The initial poor handling was compounded by Trump’s weekend Twitter feud, he added.

“It made him look small, not big,” Brinkley said, and it potentially complicates the optics for Tuesday’s trip, when optics are of significant political importance. “It’s going to be extremely awkward. … The possibilities of being booed or hissed at are very large.”