US President Donald Trump has arrived in hurricane-wracked Puerto Rico, hoping to highlight federal recovery efforts and repair damage done by his controversial early response to the crisis.
Trump’s trip to the US territory of Puerto Rico on Tuesday, normally a fairly routine show of presidential empathy, has taken on outsized political meaning.
During roughly five hours on ground, the president will meet first responders, officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as well as survivors.
Already this storm season, Trump has visited hurricane-damaged states of Texas, Louisiana and Florida.
“It’s been amazing what’s been done in a very short period of time on Puerto Rico,” Trump told reporters, defending the response.
“There’s never been a piece of land that we’ve known that was so devastated,” he claimed.
Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Maria thrashed through Puerto Rico, a US territory located in the northeast…