Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” former speech writer for President Ronald Reagan and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan reacted to President Donald Trump calling his administration’s response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico a “success.”
Noonan said, “It is clear to everyone that Puerto Rico experienced a disaster. To give the president the benefit of the doubt, he may have been trying to say so many people went there for FEMA and other agencies, and tried very hard to do a good job.”
She continued, “But because he is Donald Trump, a sort of categorical lack of empathy tends to come in. And he didn’t say, ‘these poor people had a dreadful time, and we are still working on it.’ And there is also the defensiveness that he shows, and it is a funny thing, but he speaks defensively about things by habit. As if he is always experiencing himself to be being attacked. You see a lot of Trump in the comments, sort of how they are all over the place. And how, you have to show empathy and sympathy and connection with the people who have had a dreadful time, as the people of Puerto Rico have.”
She added, “It is a funny thing with Donald Trump that he knows that he does not sound what he calls presidential. He doesn’t approach his job in that way with that kind of awareness of the need of a personal dignity. I think that he feels that if he acts presidential and fully dignified it is a concession to the critics. Do you know what I mean? It’s a sort of admission of ‘I know that I am rough, but I don’t mean to, and I will clean up my act.’ And so he continues to talk in the rough, sort of, the sometimes mindless, truly mindless way. I think that he feels that it pleases his supporters. And I know it does some, and many of them are often embarrassed by the things that he does.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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