White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that the San Juan mayor made “zero comments” when President Donald Trump opened the table for discussion during his visit to Puerto Rico.
CNN White House correspondent April Ryan asked during a White House press conference about Trump’s visit to Puerto Rico. She called the visit “controversial,” specifically referring to the opposition from San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz who has exchanged criticisms with the president, and wore a shirt reading “nasty” during a TV interview Wednesday.
When asked what the significance of her “nasty” shirt was, the mayor said it was a reference to Trump referring to her as a “nasty mayor.” The president had said in a tweet over the weekend prior, “The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump.”
In addition to her statement of wearing the “nasty” shirt, the San Juan Mayor had less than positive words regarding the president’s visit to Puerto Rico when she joined Joy Reid on the “The Rachel Maddow show” Tuesday night. She called Trump’s actions during his visit “terrible and abominable,” and criticized the round table discussion as a “PR 17-minute meeting.”
Huckabee Sanders responded to Ryan’s question by saying the visit was not “controversial” and was in fact “widely praised, even by a Democrat Governor.”
She argued the Mayor of San Juan was “politicizing” the visit rather than “focusing on the relief efforts.”
“I think that it is sad that the Mayor of San Juan chose to make that a political statement instead of a time of focusing on the relief efforts. The president invited her to be part of that conversation. He specifically asked in the meeting where many were present, including a couple dozen other mayors who were very happy with the recovery effort, the governor, the congresswoman – he opened the floor up for discussion and she actually made zero comments.”
The press secretary then suggested the round table discussion was her time to “weigh in and ask for what she needed” for San Juan.
“To me, that would have been the time and the place that she should have weighed in and asked for what she needed and laid out what she was asking for, for San Juan. She didn’t,” Huckabee Sanders said.
Huckabee Sanders concluded with a word of advice for the mayor.
“Instead, she chose to wait until the president left, and then criticized him on TV. Which I think is the wrong thing for her to do for her constituents, and I hope the next time she is given the opportunity to help her constituents, she’ll take it,” she said.
(First reported by The Washington Free Beacon) http://freebeacon.com/politics/san-juan-mayor-zero-comments-relief-open-discussion-trump/ (October 6, 2017)
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