SANDRA SMITH (CO-ANCHOR): Chief White House correspondent John Roberts is live from the north lawn with the latest. John.
JOHN ROBERTS (FOX NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT): Sandra, good morning to you. President Trump insisting that the federal government is at the ready to respond to anything that Florence throws at the East Coast. Last night at an event for the Medal of Honor Society, the president saying that his administration is getting high marks so far for its preparations. Listen here.
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ROBERTS: But remarkably, in the middle of all of this, the president reigniting his feud with Puerto Rican officials. The president tweeting this morning at length, saying, quote, “3,000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the island, after the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3,000. This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising billions of dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico.”
This all started on Tuesday when the president was asked a question about what lessons this administration learned from the hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico last year. Despite a FEMA report that showed that it was underprepared and understaffed to respond to Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the president said it was, quote, “an unsung success,” which drew sharp criticism from San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. She was back at it again today, responding to the president's latest missive, saying, quote, “Simply put: delusional, paranoid, and unhinged from any sense of reality. Trump is so vain he thinks this is about him. No, it is not.”
