San Juan’s Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz has responded to President Trump calling her ‘nasty’ by wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the word.
Ms Cruz wore the shirt during an interview in which she attacked the President for his visit to Puerto Rico after the US territory was devastated by a hurricane.
She told Univision that anyone who would attack a person ‘claiming lack of drinking water, lack of medicine for the sick, and lack of food for the hungry… has problems too severe to be explained in an interview.’
Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of Puerto Rican capital San Juan, wore a t-shirt reading ‘Nasty’ as she criticized Trump over his visit to the devastated island nation
Trump twice used the word to attack Cruz over her response to Hurricane Maria, accusing her of having poor ‘leadership abilities’
‘What is really nasty is that anyone would turn their back on the Puerto Rican people,’ she added.
Trump has twice used the word ‘nasty’ to describe Cruz, the first time in a tweet over the weekend and the second time in a TV interview.
‘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,’ he wrote on Twitter last week.
He then went on to question her leadership abilities in a tweet for which he was heavily criticized.
Then, on Tuesday, Trump repeated the comments in an interview with Fox’s Geraldo Rivera channel, in which he was asked about Cruz’ potential run for governor for the Democrats in 2020.
Trump said again that Cruz had been ‘very, very nice at the beginning,’ before adding ‘all of a sudden she went a little bit on the nasty side. And I guess she is running for office and it turns out I was right. Isn’t that a shock?’
The President also memorably described Clinton as a ‘nasty woman’ on the campaign trial last year.
Trump visited the island, where 36 people were killed by Hurricane Maria last month, on Tuesday in order to see the destruction for himself
The President’s visit was harshly criticized in some circles, including this moment where he threw supplies into a waiting crowd
Earlier this week, Cruz went on CNN and said the White House staffers accompanying Trump to Puerto Rico understood the situation on the ground better than he does.
‘I would hope that the President of the United States stops spouting out comments to hurt the people of Puerto Rico,’ Cruz said.
‘Rather than commander-in-chief, he sort of becomes miscommunicator-in-chief,’ she added.
Cruz participated in an on-camera briefing when Trump and the first lady arrived, listening to the president praise one public official after another.
Cruz’s name was conspicuously missing from the litany of thanks for a job well done.
She later called the exercise ‘a public relations situation.’
During the meeting, Trump said Hurricane Maria had thrown the federal budget ‘out of whack,’ and made light of the number of casualties, comparing it to the more deadly ‘real catastrophe’ Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
‘The productive part of the meeting was the second part,’ she added, when Trump was no longer around and a group of mayors ‘got to meet with White House staff.’
‘I truly believe that they finally saw the connection, or the disconnect, between what they were hearing on the one hand and the reality of what is happening on the ground.’