Trump Wanted to Sell Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria, His Former Homeland Security Head Says
Oh?
Leading Homeland Security Under a President Who Embraces ‘Hate-Filled’ TalkPresident Donald Trump raised the possibility of selling hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico to his Secretary of Homeland Security in late 2017, The New York Times reports. Elaine Duke, a Republican who served as acting head of Homeland Security from July to December 2017, told the Times in an interview, “The president’s initial ideas were more of as a businessman, you know: Can we outsource the electricity? Can we sell the island? You know, or divest of that asset?”
Duke said the idea didn’t come up in a serious way after Trump’s initial proposal. Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico in September 2017, causing billions of dollars in damages that the island nation is still recovering from.
A lifelong Republican who describes herself as “a kid from the Cleveland, Ohio, area,” Ms. Duke said she supported tougher enforcement of immigration laws, as long as it was tempered by a sense of humanity that she tried to exhibit when she volunteered to teach naturalization classes. But she described an administration that is often driven by ideology instead of deliberation, values politics over policy and is dominated by a president who embraces “hate-filled, angry and divisive” language.
“We get distracted by slogans, by maybe words we heard like the president allegedly saying ‘Haiti is a shithole,’” Ms. Duke said from her home overlooking the Occoquan River about 25 minutes south of Washington. “So we get only spun up in that, and then we never get to the issue.”
Ms. Duke is the latest in a series of senior officials who have gone public to describe — often in vivid, behind-the-scenes detail — their discomfort and sometimes shock at the inner workings of the Trump presidency. Like former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, she chooses her words carefully. And like John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser who published a book titled “The Room Where It Happened,” Ms. Duke says she is not ready to commit to voting for Mr. Trump again.Among her most searing moments during the response to the hurricanes came when she heard Mr. Trump raise the possibility of “divesting” or “selling” Puerto Rico as the island struggled to recover.
“The president’s initial ideas were more of as a businessman, you know,” she recalled. “Can we outsource the electricity? Can we can we sell the island? You know, or divest of that asset?”
She said the idea was never seriously considered or discussed after that meeting.