From the moment Donald Trump ascended to the presidency, he has made a habit of rewriting history, challenging the public to ignore what people can plainly see with their own eyes. | Eric Thayer-Pool/Getty Images white house Trump tries to rewrite history on Maria as Hurricane Florence approaches The president has made repeated claims about the success of his administration response to last year's deadly storm in Puerto Rico. Facing renewed criticism of his administration’s response to Hurricane Maria, President Donald Trump lashed out, grousing about his administration’s “unappreciated great job” on the Puerto Rico recovery – despite the remoteness of the island, poor access to electricity and the “totally incompetent Mayor of San Juan.” “We are ready for the big one that is coming!” an exuberant Trump concluded on Wednesday, as a new storm spun toward the East Coast. The president returned to the subject of Maria on Thursday morning in a tweet accusing Democrats of running up the death toll in Puerto Rico to smear his administration. “3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000...” Trump tweeted. “...This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!” Trump’s tweets, posted as cable news flipped almost entirely to tracking preparations in the Carolinas for Hurricane Florence, followed Trump’s claims on Monday that his administration’s response to Hurricane Maria was an “incredible unsung success” despite thousands who died — and the massive power failures that persisted for months after the storm, hobbling Puerto Rico’s already struggling economy. From the moment Trump ascended to the nation’s highest office, the former reality TV boardroom brawler has made a habit of rewriting history, challenging the public to ignore what people plainly see with their own eyes – often on television, where Trump is watching it, too. “If he doesn’t like the reality, he changes it,” said former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res. “He’s able to take a reality and modify it and convince himself of that modified reality.” Playbook PM Sign up for our must-read newsletter on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or updates from POLITICO and you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service. You can unsubscribe at any time and you can contact us here. This sign-up form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Over the past 20 months, Trump, who in his past life branded and sold steaks, vodka, neckties, perfume, wine, gold-leaf sconces and water, has often peddled statements that contradict his own remarks. Trump insisted this spring that former FBI Director James Comey “was not fired because of the phony Russia investigation” even though the president told NBC News last year he was thinking about the probe when he decided to finally drop the hammer. Trump asserted in July that the Russians “don’t want Trump” to stay in the White House, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin having said publicly he wanted Trump to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. U.S. officials have said Russia tried to sway the election in Trump’s favor. At an August 2017 rally, Trump took the media to task for not giving him enough credit for denouncing neo-Nazis in the wake of the fatal clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year. “The words were perfect,” Trump said, papering over his initial comments that appeared to equate counter-protesters and white nationalists. White House aides and people close to Trump have grown accustomed to the president’s frequent exaggerations and distortions, according to interviews with a half-dozen of the president’s allies. They acknowledge privately that Trump has, in the favored phrasing of those who know him, a “complicated relationship with the truth.” White House lawyers have even cited Trump’s frequent falsehoods as a rationale for him not sitting for an in-person interview with special counsel Robert Mueller. “If he’s got an insecurity, if there’s something that he worries about, those are often the times he’s even more adamant,” said an outside adviser to the president. Trump’s latest spat, which comes less than two months before the midterm elections, is part of a political calculation that voters will internalize his sunnier retelling of events and overlook what really happened. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo Res said Trump’s penchant for writing his own reality dates back to the 1990s, when his business empire was facing financial difficulties. “He managed to convince himself that he had nothing to do with it,” she said. Perhaps the most illustrative version of a presidential embellishment came early in his tenure. Confronted with the fact that the crowd size at his January 2017 inauguration paled in comparison to former President Barack Obama’s, Trump flew into a rage and instructed his then-press secretary, Sean Spicer, to attack the media for reporting on the notable contrast. “[P]hotographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall,” Spicer said in those first fateful remarks from the briefing room, the day after the inauguration. In actuality, the president himself sought to distort the crowd size. Internal documents first obtained by The Guardian showed that Trump and Spicer called the National Park Service to complain about the crowd size photos, leaving the “impression that President Trump wanted to see pictures that appeared to depict more spectators in the crowd,” according to one National Park Service official. Trump’s claims this week that his administration did a “great job” in Puerto Rico stand in contrast to the ongoing recovery efforts and data that show Maria’s death toll was much larger than previously reported. More than 3,000 people died from the storm, according to a recent report sponsored by the Puerto Rican government, many more than the prior official death toll that the federal government had maintained for months. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz this week, juxtaposed the 3,000 deaths with Trump’s professed success, offering a stinging rejoinder: “Can you imagine what he thinks failure looks like?” When it comes to his response, Trump is deeply sensitive about comparisons to Hurricane Katrina – and he has never been able to let Cruz’s sharp criticism go. A Politico investigation found the Trump administration’s response to Hurricane Harvey, in Houston and along the Gulf Coast, was faster and greater than its response to Maria. Trump’s anger toward Cruz stems from his belief that she unfairly politicized the storm and helped cement the narrative that the federal response was ham-fisted from the beginning. “He genuinely, legitimately feels that was unfair,” a former Trump administration official said. The latest storm seems to have uncorked the president’s lingering resentment. “All he sees on cable news is reporting on how he failed in the aftermath of the hurricane,” another former White House aide told POLITICO. Of Trump’s inability to tamp down his rage, the person added: “Zero discipline.” Trump’s latest spat, less than two months before the midterm elections, is part of a political calculation that voters will internalize his version of events and overlook what really happened. But some Republicans close to Trump acknowledge that risks alienating voters in Puerto Rico, whom Democrats are targeting ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Trump and his administration’s response to Maria left a majority of Puerto Rican respondents with a negative impression, according to a survey released Wednesday by The Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation. Some 52 percent of respondents rated Trump's performance as “poor,” and 28 percent called it “fair.” Only 15 percent gave him a positive rating.<doc-sep>WASHINGTON – Facing the political perils that a natural disaster can bring, President Donald Trump is emphasizing that his team is ready for Hurricane Florence even as he comes under renewed fire from critics who have slammed the response last year to the devastation in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria. In tweets, statements, and a short video released Wednesday, Trump has praised his team's hurricane preparation – "we're ready, we're able" – and urged residents of the Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia to take warnings seriously. "Bad things can happen when you’re talking about a storm this size," Trump said in the 1-minute, 26-second video he tweeted out Wednesday. "(It's) called Mother Nature; you never know – but we know." During a White House reception for Congressional Medal of Honor recipients and their families, Trump said: “We’re getting tremendous accolades from politicians and the people. We are ready, but this is going to be one of the biggest ones to ever hit our country." Trump has also hailed his administration's past response efforts – including Puerto Rico, which he called an "unsung success" in the face of criticism. Nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Maria, making it the second deadliest hurricane in U.S. history. The toll far exceeded the original estimates, leading to accusations that the Federal Emergency Management Administration did not do its job. Maria left much of the island without power for months as it destroyed homes and and crippled infrastructure. On a visit to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of the Sept. 20, 2017, storm, Trump tossed paper towels to Puerto Rican residents at a local relief center, angering storm victims and others who saw his actions as insensitive. Democrats excoriated Trump over his tweet saying that his administration "got A-pluses" for previous hurricane work in Texas and Florida and "did an unappreciated great job" with Puerto Rico. "The 2017 hurricane season made painfully clear that FEMA has limited capacity to respond to multiple disasters as it is," said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. Thompson and others pointed to a new report that said the Trump administration used nearly $10 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's budget to bolster border efforts by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., told USA TODAY that, with more hurricanes on the way, "this is just incredibly irresponsible." Trump administration aides said the money in question was unused administration funds, and that moving them to ICE did not affect FEMA rescue missions. As Hurricane Florence approaches the United States, Trump has cleared his schedule for the next two days. The president had planned to travel to political rallies in Missouri on Thursday and Mississippi on Friday, but those events were canceled. The Trump administration is looking to avoid the political fate of predecessors like George W. Bush. Bush took heat over the botched response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, as thousands of flooded-out New Orleans residents were stranded without access to food or shelter. Bush's father saw his re-election prospects in 1992 dim over what critics called a slow response to Hurricane Andrew. It can happen at any level of government. Back in 1979, political analysts believe Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic lost his re-election bid to Jane Byrne because of the poor way the city handled a major snowstorm. "Any executive – mayors, governors, presidents – are really judged by how they respond to these natural disasters," said Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow in governance studies with the Brookings Institution. "George Bush had a deep slide after Katrina, and he never really recovered from it." More:Trump gives himself 'A pluses' on 'hurricane work,' blames Maria on San Juan mayor More:Trump administration took nearly $10 million from FEMA's budget to support ICE, documents show<doc-sep>A year after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico finally knows how many people died. Trump is correct that pre-storm problems with Puerto Rico’s infrastructure and its distance from the mainland complicated federal assistance, although calling it “inaccessible” is not true. As for San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, she did emerge as a major critic of the president’s in the aftermath of the storm, but there’s no evidence that anything she did hurt the recovery effort. Disasters are disasters, and a certain amount of suffering is inevitable. The role of federal response is to minimize that. To assess how well that went, you don’t need to take the president’s word for it. Last week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office released a detailed report on the federal response to last year’s disaster season. As Trump says, the response to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma seems to have gone reasonably well. Not so in Puerto Rico. The GAO identifies several factors. Some were internal: The Federal Emergency Management Agency was understaffed to begin with, and the challenge of responding to the two previous hurricanes as well as wildfires in California meant it was stretched even thinner: At the height of FEMA workforce deployments in October 2017, 54 percent of staff were serving in a capacity in which they did not hold the title of “Qualified”—according to FEMA’s qualification system standards—a past challenge GAO has identified. FEMA had a shortage of Spanish speakers on staff. The agency also didn’t anticipate how badly the storm would hurt local government in Puerto Rico, making it hard for them to assist federal response. Responders struggled to get goods to the island, and the damage to electrical and communications infrastructure as well as roads slowed responses, so that even when supplies arrived, they sometimes sat on docks without any efficient way to be distributed. These problems continue to this day: After @realDonaldTrump touted an “unsung success” in #puertorico we just confirmed an airport runway-full of FEMA bottled water going to waste nearly a year after Hurricane Maria. Feds blame the locals, locals blame the Feds. Either way, it’s all too contaminated to drink. pic.twitter.com/x7xDKcx4Ex — Bill Weir (@BillWeirCNN) September 12, 2018 Not all of this falls at FEMA’s feet. As I have written, the agency often becomes a scapegoat for failures of other departments and governments at all levels, both before and after a disaster strikes. (To give one example, BuzzFeed reports today that FEMA rejected many Puerto Rican requests for funeral assistance—but that is apparently because federal rules require that deaths be disaster-related, and Puerto Rico wasn’t correctly labeling such deaths.) Yet even if one is inclined to grant FEMA some indulgence, that doesn’t mean the response went well. The facts show otherwise.<doc-sep>
065106 02: A man stands in a partially destroyed house September 27, 1989 in South Carolina. Hugo is ranked as the eleventh most intense hurricane to strike the US this century and is rated the second costliest with over seven billion dollars in damages. (Photo by Alan Weiner/Liaison) FROM EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY ASTRONAUT ALEXANDER GERST: Watch out, America! #HurricaneFlorence is so enormous, we could only capture her with a super wide-angle lens from the @Space_Station, 400 km directly above the eye. Get prepared on the East Coast, this is a no-kidding nightmare coming for you. #Horizons CLEARED: All platforms/affils COURTESY: Alexander Gerst/ESA PHOTOS: https://twitter.com/Astro_Alex/status/1039870760343543814 NS Slug: NC:FLORENCE-RIVER FLOODING REACHES WINDOWS (STRONG) Synopsis: Video of flooding from the Pungo River in Belhaven, NC, which has risen dramatically due to Hurricane Florence Video Shows: Video of flooding from the Pungo River in Belhaven, NC, which has risen dramatically due to Hurricane Florence Keywords: HURRICANE FLORENCE SOUTHEAST UNITED STATES SEVERE WEATHER STORM President Donald Trump visits the Temple Baptist Church, where food and other supplies are being distributed during Hurricane Florence recovery efforts, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2018, in New Bern, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Michael Nelson floats in a boat made from a metal tub and fishing floats after the Neuse River went over its banks and flooded his street during Hurricane Florence September 13, 2018 in New Bern, North Carolina. Some parts of New Bern could be flooded with a possible 9-foot storm surge as the Category 2 hurricane approaches the United States. (CNN) — As he braces for Hurricane Florence, President Donald Trump is stoking new outrage over his refusal to accept any blame for the relief effort following Puerto Rico’s monster storm last year. On Tuesday he insisted the operation had been “incredibly successful,” despite shocking new figures putting the death toll at nearly 3,000. Again Wednesday morning, Trump said his administration’s work in Puerto Rico was not appreciated. “We got A Pluses for our recent hurricane work in Texas and Florida (and did an unappreciated great job in Puerto Rico, even though an inaccessible island with very poor electricity and a totally incompetent Mayor of San Juan). We are ready for the big one that is coming!” Trump tweeted. The President’s refusal to ever admit a mistake and to hype his own perceived achievements struck a jarring note, even as he tried to project a smoother response to the potentially historic hurricane bearing down on the Carolinas. Every hurricane season challenges presidents, bringing tests of organization and coordination with state and local governments, political positioning and empathy, given the multiday relief operations, budget emergencies and grave humanitarian consequences that often unfold. As a major hurricane approaches, everyone’s focus should be on saving lives. But each storm also has a political dimension. For a White House under siege over Bob Woodward’s new book and an anonymous New York Times op-ed by a senior official criticizing the president, days of news coverage of the storm may offer a short breathing space. A strong performance by the president might even temporarily boost his ebbing approval ratings. But the risks are also high – no one in the White House will need reminding that a presidency already in crisis simply cannot afford the new hit of a botched response. ’Ready’ Trump appeared in the Oval Office alongside a map showing the expected path of Florence, which is expected to blast the East Coast with damaging winds and saturating rainfall from early on Friday. He had a simple message. “We are as ready as anybody has ever been,” Trump said, projecting an image of resolve and seamless management at a time when his leadership style is being criticized as never before, as he appeared with top Federal Emergency Management Agency and Department of Homeland Security chiefs. The President warned the storm would be “tremendously big and tremendously wet” and that the government was sparing “no expense” and was “totally prepared.” The first priority of any White House ahead of a storm is to ensure that lines of communication are open with local authorities and federal resources are ready to deploy. A President also has an incomparable megaphone to warn people to obey evacuation orders. But hurricane season is also a nervous time for White House press operations. Presidents have taken serious political hits for botching relief efforts – the most notorious occasion was when Hurricane Katrina in 2005 helped devastate George W. Bush’s second term. Trump fumbled in his first hurricane season.