U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter Saturday morning to criticize the mayor of Puerto Rican city San Juan for slamming the federal government’s disaster response.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who belongs to the region’s Popular Democratic Party, spoke out against statements made by acting Homeland Security secretary Elaine Duke which referred to governmental response to the disaster as a “good news story.”
“Maybe from where she’s standing, it’s a good news story,” Cruz said, The Hill reported. “When you’re drinking from a creek, it’s not a good news story. When you don’t have food for a baby, it’s not a good news story. Damnit, this is not a good news story,” she continued. “This is a people-are-dying story.”
WATCH: San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz expressed her frustrations on Friday of the response to relief efforts in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria.
The mayor has also accused the federal government of “killing us with their inefficiency.”
On Saturday morning, Trump tweeted a series of statements slamming Cruz for her criticisms of the Trump administration’s response in Puerto Rico. He wrote that “such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help.”
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He went on to say that “they want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.”
He also said that the mayor was complimentary of the efforts just a few days ago, but “has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump.”
Trump concluded the tweet storm by lashing out at the “fake news networks” and pledging to visit Puerto Rico with First Lady Melania Trump on Tuesday.
The mayor responded by calling for a united focus on helping people in Puerto Rico.
She did not mention the president directly, but the missives were posted about an hour after Trump accused her and others in Puerto Rico of “poor leadership,” failing “to get their workers to help” and wanting “everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.”
Later in the day, Trump, who was spending the weekend at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, went on a second Twitter rant about the situation in Puerto Rico.
While the U.S. president still went after the media, he also gave credit to some Puerto Rican politicians while claiming the Trump administration “was getting great marks from the people that truly matter!”
His 10th tweet of the day was a second shot at the mayor of San Juan.
Hurricane Maria left the entire island and its 3.4 million residents without power and destroyed 80 percent of its transmission and distribution infrastructure, according to the Department of Energy.
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-With files from Global News’ Kevin Nielsen, Reuters and the Associated Press.
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