When Tony Hinchcliffe, a so-called comedian opening for Donald Trump at his latest MAGA rally Sunday, called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage,” it didn’t really shock me; at this point, it’s just part-and-parcel of the utter disdain Mr. Trump has for both Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican people. It was a crude remark borne of a movement that does not truly consider us Americans.

I would know. When I served on the Board of Directors of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, I saw first-hand President Trump’s utter disdain for the island and our people, and how he not only abandoned us in our time of need but he actively blocked federal assistance from reaching us so we could rebuild our homes, bridges and schools.  

It was Mr. Trump’s administration, of course, that left us in the dark for so long. There is a simple explanation: he and the MAGA movement do not care about Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans. There are the obvious examples, of course; he famously chucked paper towels at us in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Maria and tried to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland, as if we were a baseball player. 

Yet his gross mismanagement of the response to Hurricane Maria is the far larger problem. Rather than rally FEMA and the American people behind their countrymen in need, he went on TV to say Puerto Ricans just “want everything done for them.” He went on to deride the island as “dirty” and “poor.” (For the record, if we were dirty it was because his team couldn’t get the water running, and if we were poor it was because we were without power for six months.)

When the American people rightly demanded that Trump do more to help Puerto Rico, he took his revenge. He personally intervened to cut Medicaid funding to the island in half and opposed it getting any more nutrition assistance aid. What else should we have expected? After all, this was the same man who repeatedly lied about the death toll after Hurricane Maria. 

Where Trump used his power to punish Puerto Rico, the Biden-Harris Administration did the opposite – moving immediately to unblock the funds held up by Trump and unleash federal resources to usher in a new era of economic growth and opportunity for Puerto Rico. The administration developed a joint economic dialogue with the government of Puerto Rico that honed in on the island’s real needs: a more resilient power grid; a better trained workforce; better infrastructure; and a better diversified economy. What’s more, it didn’t need bureaucrats 1000 miles away telling it what to do. It needed flexibility and technical assistance, so that’s what it got. 

They didn’t stop there. The administration ensured that Puerto Rico was not overlooked, as has so often happened before, in passing the American Rescue Plan and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – delivering, for example, an expanded Child Tax Credit to achieve parity with the mainland, and more than a billion dollars to upgrade the island’s roads and bridges, to name two. 

To-date, over $140 billion has been obligated to Puerto Rico, together with technical assistance when the island needs it and autonomy when it doesn’t. 

The results are already showing, but there is much work that remains. 

Puerto Rico’s journey back from Hurricane Maria is still a long way from complete. But there is only one presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, who will help it on that journey. Only one who has a track record of pressing for equitable disaster relief and disaster aid. Only one who has developed a robust Puerto Rico policy agenda focused on unlocking the island’s full potential. 

And Mr. Trump? Let’s just say that Mr. Hinchcliffe had every reason to be certain that calling Puerto Rico an “island of garbage” would not offend his host.