From the op-ed:
Extraordinary crises are the acid test of presidential leadership.
As I learned while managing the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, a president’s personal engagement is the indispensable variable in ensuring a fully engaged federal crisis response. In the face of unusually complex and devastating emergencies, the federal government must transcend business-as-usual, mounting the sort of massive whole-of-government effort that only the president can fully mobilize. What the nation has witnessed in Puerto Rico over the past two weeks sadly demonstrates the inverse: the shortfalls that emerge when a president leaves a major federal disaster response on autopilot.
President Trump’s tactless comments during his visit to San Juan this week provide a good microcosm of the larger issue. Trump repeatedly downplayed the severity of the crisis; described his administration’s response as “incredible” and “unbelievable”; praised the then-official death toll of 16 as something Puerto Ricans “can be very proud of”; told disaster survivors at a distribution site “you don’t need” the flashlights he was handing to them; and claimed Puerto Rico had not experienced a “real catastrophe, like Hurricane Katrina.” Those remarks followed other comments from Trump and his senior advisers who have characterized the federal response as “amazing,” and “a good news story.”
As tone-deaf as Trump’s self-congratulations were, they reflect a much deeper problem than just a flawed communications strategy. The president’s remarks in Puerto Rico were factually wrong in ways that raise serious questions about whether he grasps the depth of the crisis — and whether he truly has a handle on the federal response.