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Were Trump’s Comments During Puerto Rico Visit ‘Insensitive’?

October 04, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Following a public clash with the mayor of San Juan, President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico, a trip that went smoothly for the most part – although some of his remarks were not as diplomatic as they could have been.

“Now, I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack because we’ve spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico, and that’s fine,” Trump said in his address. “We’ve saved a lot of lives.”

Trump didn’t seem to realize that even though the government is working to help Puerto Rico, there are still a lot of people hurting and struggling.

“When you lay out facts that way, they come across insensitive,” Doc said on Wednesday’s show while filling in for Glenn.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

DOC: Doc Thompson in for Glenn along with Kris Cruz and Kal. We have to get on to other news including President Trump in Puerto Rico. Before we go any further, I am going to need a disclaimer at this point. I Doc Thompson support much of what the president has done and I think he has been unfairly criticized by the media. I didn't vote for him and I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton. I do support him as president and hope he does good things and I have given him fairly high marks on things like the Supreme Court nominee he put forth. Having said that, we will now criticize President Trump. Did you like that?

President Trump has been pretty good with the handling of natural disasters. He did what a president does. You open up the purse swings. There is going to be FEMA money, natural disaster, all of this. Both the governors of Florida and Texas did a good job for the two hurricanes that came through. But President Trump was very good there.

They tried to criticize him, they being the media and the left, for those two. It didn't happen. He did a pretty good job. For Puerto Rico, he did a good job early on but they were not letting it be and had to find ways to come out and criticize him.

I was fine with him criticizing the mayor of San Juan. She is clearly a leftist and was pretending like President Trump was leaving them high and dry even though he had opened up the purse springs and sent the military and National Guard and sent the trauma guard. Having said all of that, when he went to Puerto Rico he looked goofy.

KRIS: It is a sign I like from Trump. When he is visiting things like this, I was super excited. Everything he did literally checked by box.

DOC: Even the throwing the paper towels?

KRIS: We had a good follow-up. He knows he have good basketball players. I will give him that. He was like Puerto Rico, here is your chance.

DOC: He's a good jump shot. But at the full court press he is horrible. He is not playing good D or hustling to the other end of the court and where is his rebound.

If you want to apply him as a jump shot specialist that is fine but you have to play both ends of the court.

KRIS: I will give you that.

DOC: That is the type of sports take you normally don't get on the Glenn Beck program and by that, I mean sports talk.

His comments about money and the budget in Puerto Rico not inaccurate. I know he is a guy who just kind of throws it out there. You got to know you are going to step in it. I know he is not concerned about the media or the left criticizing him but you are not as effective of a leader when you say things like he said.

Here is President Trump talking about the budget:

I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico. You are throwing our budget out of whack because we have spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico and that is fine. We have saved a lot of lives. Every death is a horror but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina and the hundreds of people that died and you look at what happened here with really a storm that was just totally overpowering. Nobody has ever seen anything like this.

DOC: This goes to my point when we started the show we don't give each other the benefit of the doubt anymore. He brought it back a little bit when he said people have died. That is fine. He was drawing a comparison to Katrina and that is fine but that is going to get you in trouble every time. As much as many didn't give him the benefit of the doubt that he did not mean bad things, he also didn't realize there is a lot of people hurting right now. There is a lot of people in Puerto Rico that are struggling. When you lay out facts that way they come across insensitive and in normal circumstances we would say man up, get a little tougher there and that is fine. But while people are still in this much parallel. There are people that are still facing all kinds of challenges. Health challenges. Food and shelter challenges in Puerto Rico. Maybe it was a callus comparison and not good timing. Probably shouldn't have gone there.

I agree. But he was right with the comment about Puerto Rico mishandling their money. Even when I visited Puerto Rico, I looked around and I was like wait a minute. What is going on here? To be a beautiful island. Tourists in San Juan. And you have all this wasted money? Where is it going?

DOC: Puerto Rico just had a default. They went through billions of dollars. This has been something they have been struggling with for decades and keep trying to get out in front of it. There was a bond issue like a lot of different places in America.

States/cities. That was an issue. But you are supposed to plan for those things.

You are supposed to have politicians that say during the lean times when you have stuff coming in you have to put things away and plan for the lean times. Puerto Rico has had sketchy politician and people who have not done what is right. They are not prepared it. We are going to be on the hook at one point for the debt of loss of Puerto Rico like we would be anywhere else. One way or another that is coming. Trump even suggested that.

KRIS: Trump also said he is going to wipe out the debt.

DOC: How is he doing that?

KRIS: I do not know.

DOC: Anything owed to the government he has control over? I don't know if he can unilaterally do that. He likely has money owed through the executive branch like military where he could wipe it out by paying for it somewhere else or something but he is not exclusively in control nor is he to any bond debt that would be owed to people outside the Federal Government.

KRIS: This is a quote he said. He said they owe a lot of money to our friends on Wall Street and we are going to have to wipe that out. You are going to say Good-bye to that. I don't know if is Goldman Sachs or whoever it is but you can wave Good-bye to that.

DOC: He wasn't talking government or executive branch but people on Wall Street. Here is the problem. Wall Street is not some inanimate object not connected to people. Wall Street is a system of investors and ways to invest. Companies and organizations that govern or regulate or you invest through.

Who invests? People. It is easy to say you will have to say Good-bye to that. You will have to do that when you are not the one who loses money. It is not just Mr. Goldman Sachs and I have trillions and I am able to forgive a few million dollars here and there because I am wealthy, Mr. Goldman Sachs. No, Goldman Sachs is a company that invests money for people. If they say Good-bye to that money they are saying Good-bye to the money from people who invested in Puerto Rico. How about you are the little old lady in Indiana who invested part of your retirement in something that invested in Puerto Rico. Should she say Good-bye to that money? Of course not. There are risks that come with it and if that is what he meant that is fine. But if he means we should give that up, that is crazy. It is not for him to say.

KRIS: And the market responded.

DOC: If he is talking about a reset, of course we have to reset. There is going to be a reset in the market. Today? I don't know. Five years from now? I don't know. Eventually it will reset. That is what markets do. It is inflated right now. Eventually it will reset and whether that takes it down 1% or 40% that is what will happen.

KRIS: It dropped to 33 cents on the dollar where last month it was trading around 50 sent on the dollar.

DOC: Another clip of the president.

We will help the people. $72 billion in debt before the hurricane hit. They had a power plant that didn't work before the hurricane. We will help them do something and get it back on its feet. But I am just very, very proud of the fact, you know, if you look at one statistic, 16 deaths. That is a lot of deaths. If you look at Katrina it was in the thousands. We had FEMA here before the storm even came. They were on the island during the storm and before the first storm. They got hit by two hurricanes. We are very proud of the job we have done. Very, very proud. We will have to try to get them back. The power is slowly getting on. The roads are open. The runways are open. If these people you have met today, all of the different people, first responders, these are incredible people.

I totally agree.

DOC: He is accurate. FEMA was there. I give him props. The $72 billion is how much they were out and defaulted on. And power plant trouble, sure. What does he mean we will take care of that?

KRIS: That is another thing that scares me. Puerto Rico is my county. But what does that mean? If a president is saying hey, we are going to take care of it. Last time I checked, well this president has money, but last time I checked the government doesn't owe money. It is my money. So that means I am going to pay for it.

DOC: Exactly. Where is that coming from? It is fine to lead on this but if he was saying we are just going to pony up money I am happy to help people in Puerto Rico even with public funds but I need assurances just like I do in the rest of America that you are actually doing what you have to do. Balance your budget, start paying down the national debt, start finding a way to pay for the unfunded liabilities that will come up over the next 10 years, get your spending under control, come up with a new tax plan, repeal Obamacare. You have to do those things before you promise to build a power plant in Puerto Rico or bail them out of $72 billion.

If the president wants to lead on some sort of primarily private/public partnership, fine. Puerto Rico, there is an opportunity to make money for all of us for Puerto Rico to be a testing ground. It is three and a half, four million people? Not huge geographically wise. But I think broadcast market. San Juan is top 20 or top 15. And it is American territory. Those are Americans.

If you have to rebuild the grid, Kris, let's do it right. Let's do fiber optics and wi-fi throughout the island. The government can't pay for it but if you show people an investment opportunity and we say people of Puerto Rico, I as a private company, want to build and this will be a bigger tourist destination there is opportunities that way. Lead that way. That is awesome.

KRIS: We learned during the morning headlines that Google is sending wi-fi balloons to connect people back to the internet.

DOC: They are what?

KRIS: Sending hot wear balloons.

DOC: Google, one of the most profound technology companies in the world today, that has been a trendsetter for a decade or more and on the cutting edge of things we don't even understand, their big technological solution to helping Puerto Rico get wi-fi established is balloons? Come on?

KRIS: Wi-fi balloons.

DOC: Balloon technology? This is it. We are employing the most advanced balloon technology available. We are here to help. We have balloons. Stand by, Puerto Rico. Hang on, we are inflating them now. You will be up in no time. We have got our IT balloon guys on the ground. They have made landfall.

Doc Thompson in for Glenn Beck.

Without civic action, America faces collapse

JEFF KOWALSKY / Contributor | Getty Images

Every vote, jury duty, and act of engagement is civics in action, not theory. The republic survives only when citizens embrace responsibility.

I slept through high school civics class. I memorized the three branches of government, promptly forgot them, and never thought of that word again. Civics seemed abstract, disconnected from real life. And yet, it is critical to maintaining our republic.

Civics is not a class. It is a responsibility. A set of habits, disciplines, and values that make a country possible. Without it, no country survives.

We assume America will survive automatically, but every generation must learn to carry the weight of freedom.

Civics happens every time you speak freely, worship openly, question your government, serve on a jury, or cast a ballot. It’s not a theory or just another entry in a textbook. It’s action — the acts we perform every day to be a positive force in society.

Many of us recoil at “civic responsibility.” “I pay my taxes. I follow the law. I do my civic duty.” That’s not civics. That’s a scam, in my opinion.

Taking up the torch

The founders knew a republic could never run on autopilot. And yet, that’s exactly what we do now. We assume it will work, then complain when it doesn’t. Meanwhile, the people steering the country are driving it straight into a mountain — and they know it.

Our founders gave us tools: separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, elections. But they also warned us: It won’t work unless we are educated, engaged, and moral.

Are we educated, engaged, and moral? Most Americans cannot even define a republic, never mind “keep one,” as Benjamin Franklin urged us to do after the Constitutional Convention.

We fought and died for the republic. Gaining it was the easy part. Keeping it is hard. And keeping it is done through civics.

Start small and local

In our homes, civics means teaching our children the Constitution, our history, and that liberty is not license — it is the space to do what is right. In our communities, civics means volunteering, showing up, knowing your sheriff, attending school board meetings, and understanding the laws you live under. When necessary, it means challenging them.

How involved are you in your local community? Most people would admit: not really.

Civics is learned in practice. And it starts small. Be honest in your business dealings. Speak respectfully in disagreement. Vote in every election, not just the presidential ones. Model citizenship for your children. Liberty is passed down by teaching and example.

Samuel Corum / Stringer | Getty Images

We assume America will survive automatically, but every generation must learn to carry the weight of freedom.

Start with yourself. Study the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and state laws. Study, act, serve, question, and teach. Only then can we hope to save the republic. The next election will not fix us. The nation will rise or fall based on how each of us lives civics every day.

Civics isn’t a class. It’s the way we protect freedom, empower our communities, and pass down liberty to the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

'Rage against the dying of the light': Charlie Kirk lived that mandate

PHILL MAGAKOE / Contributor | Getty Images

Kirk’s tragic death challenges us to rise above fear and anger, to rebuild bridges where others build walls, and to fight for the America he believed in.

I’ve only felt this weight once before. It was 2001, just as my radio show was about to begin. The World Trade Center fell, and I was called to speak immediately. I spent the day and night by my bedside, praying for words that could meet the moment.

Yesterday, I found myself in the same position. September 11, 2025. The assassination of Charlie Kirk. A friend. A warrior for truth.

Out of this tragedy, the tyrant dies, but the martyr’s influence begins.

Moments like this make words feel inadequate. Yet sometimes, words from another time speak directly to our own. In 1947, Dylan Thomas, watching his father slip toward death, penned lines that now resonate far beyond his own grief:

Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Thomas was pleading for his father to resist the impending darkness of death. But those words have become a mandate for all of us: Do not surrender. Do not bow to shadows. Even when the battle feels unwinnable.

Charlie Kirk lived that mandate. He knew the cost of speaking unpopular truths. He knew the fury of those who sought to silence him. And yet he pressed on. In his life, he embodied a defiance rooted not in anger, but in principle.

Picking up his torch

Washington, Jefferson, Adams — our history was started by men who raged against an empire, knowing the gallows might await. Lincoln raged against slavery. Martin Luther King Jr. raged against segregation. Every generation faces a call to resist surrender.

It is our turn. Charlie’s violent death feels like a knockout punch. Yet if his life meant anything, it means this: Silence in the face of darkness is not an option.

He did not go gently. He spoke. He challenged. He stood. And now, the mantle falls to us. To me. To you. To every American.

We cannot drift into the shadows. We cannot sit quietly while freedom fades. This is our moment to rage — not with hatred, not with vengeance, but with courage. Rage against lies, against apathy, against the despair that tells us to do nothing. Because there is always something you can do.

Even small acts — defiance, faith, kindness — are light in the darkness. Reaching out to those who mourn. Speaking truth in a world drowning in deceit. These are the flames that hold back the night. Charlie carried that torch. He laid it down yesterday. It is ours to pick up.

The light may dim, but it always does before dawn. Commit today: I will not sleep as freedom fades. I will not retreat as darkness encroaches. I will not be silent as evil forces claim dominion. I have no king but Christ. And I know whom I serve, as did Charlie.

Two turning points, decades apart

On Wednesday, the world changed again. Two tragedies, separated by decades, bound by the same question: Who are we? Is this worth saving? What kind of people will we choose to be?

Imagine a world where more of us choose to be peacemakers. Not passive, not silent, but builders of bridges where others erect walls. Respect and listening transform even the bitterest of foes. Charlie Kirk embodied this principle.

He did not strike the weak; he challenged the powerful. He reached across divides of politics, culture, and faith. He changed hearts. He sparked healing. And healing is what our nation needs.

At the center of all this is one truth: Every person is a child of God, deserving of dignity. Change will not happen in Washington or on social media. It begins at home, where loneliness and isolation threaten our souls. Family is the antidote. Imperfect, yes — but still the strongest source of stability and meaning.

Mark Wilson / Staff | Getty Images

Forgiveness, fidelity, faithfulness, and honor are not dusty words. They are the foundation of civilization. Strong families produce strong citizens. And today, Charlie’s family mourns. They must become our family too. We must stand as guardians of his legacy, shining examples of the courage he lived by.

A time for courage

I knew Charlie. I know how he would want us to respond: Multiply his courage. Out of this tragedy, the tyrant dies, but the martyr’s influence begins. Out of darkness, great and glorious things will sprout — but we must be worthy of them.

Charlie Kirk lived defiantly. He stood in truth. He changed the world. And now, his torch is in our hands. Rage, not in violence, but in unwavering pursuit of truth and goodness. Rage against the dying of the light.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck resurrects the 9-12 Project to support Charlie Kirk's family

Glenn Beck is once again calling on his loyal listeners and viewers to come together and channel the same unity and purpose that defined the historic 9-12 Project. That movement, born in the wake of national challenges, brought millions together to revive core values of faith, hope, and charity.

Glenn created the original 9-12 Project in early 2009 to bring Americans back to where they were in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. In those moments, we weren't Democrats and Republicans, conservative or liberal, Red States or Blue States, we were united as one, as America. The original 9-12 Project aimed to root America back in the founding principles of this country that united us during those darkest of days.

This new initiative draws directly from that legacy, focusing on supporting the family of Charlie Kirk in these dark days following his tragic murder.

The revival of the 9-12 Project aims to secure the long-term well-being of Charlie Kirk's wife and children. All donations will go straight to meeting their immediate and future needs. If the family deems the funds surplus to their requirements, Charlie's wife has the option to redirect them toward the vital work of Turning Point USA.

This campaign is more than just financial support—it's a profound gesture of appreciation for Kirk's tireless dedication to the cause of liberty. It embodies the unbreakable bond of our community, proving that when we stand united, we can make a real difference.
Glenn Beck invites you to join this effort. Show your solidarity by donating today and honoring Charlie Kirk and his family in this meaningful way.

You can learn more about the 9-12 Project and donate HERE

The critical difference: Rights from the Creator, not the state

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

When politicians claim that rights flow from the state, they pave the way for tyranny.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) recently delivered a lecture that should alarm every American. During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, he argued that believing rights come from a Creator rather than government is the same belief held by Iran’s theocratic regime.

Kaine claimed that the principles underpinning Iran’s dictatorship — the same regime that persecutes Sunnis, Jews, Christians, and other minorities — are also the principles enshrined in our Declaration of Independence.

In America, rights belong to the individual. In Iran, rights serve the state.

That claim exposes either a profound misunderstanding or a reckless indifference to America’s founding. Rights do not come from government. They never did. They come from the Creator, as the Declaration of Independence proclaims without qualification. Jefferson didn’t hedge. Rights are unalienable — built into every human being.

This foundation stands worlds apart from Iran. Its leaders invoke God but grant rights only through clerical interpretation. Freedom of speech, property, religion, and even life itself depend on obedience to the ruling clerics. Step outside their dictates, and those so-called rights vanish.

This is not a trivial difference. It is the essence of liberty versus tyranny. In America, rights belong to the individual. The government’s role is to secure them, not define them. In Iran, rights serve the state. They empower rulers, not the people.

From Muhammad to Marx

The same confusion applies to Marxist regimes. The Soviet Union’s constitutions promised citizens rights — work, health care, education, freedom of speech — but always with fine print. If you spoke out against the party, those rights evaporated. If you practiced religion openly, you were charged with treason. Property and voting were allowed as long as they were filtered and controlled by the state — and could be revoked at any moment. Rights were conditional, granted through obedience.

Kaine seems to be advocating a similar approach — whether consciously or not. By claiming that natural rights are somehow comparable to sharia law, he ignores the critical distinction between inherent rights and conditional privileges. He dismisses the very principle that made America a beacon of freedom.

Jefferson and the founders understood this clearly. “We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights,” they wrote. No government, no cleric, no king can revoke them. They exist by virtue of humanity itself. The government exists to protect them, not ration them.

This is not a theological quibble. It is the entire basis of our government. Confuse the source of rights, and tyranny hides behind piety or ideology. The people are disempowered. Clerics, bureaucrats, or politicians become arbiters of what rights citizens may enjoy.

John Greim / Contributor | Getty Images

Gifts from God, not the state

Kaine’s statement reflects either a profound ignorance of this principle or an ideological bias that favors state power over individual liberty. Either way, Americans must recognize the danger. Understanding the origin of rights is not academic — it is the difference between freedom and submission, between the American experiment and theocratic or totalitarian rule.

Rights are not gifts from the state. They are gifts from God, secured by reason, protected by law, and defended by the people. Every American must understand this. Because when rights come from government instead of the Creator, freedom disappears.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.