basically, the storm has pretty much moved to the north of us at this point and it has calmed quite a bit. the early part was probably the worst part and did it hit more of the western part and the southern part of st. thomas. overall, it was nothing compared to what we experienced about two years ago. you can see in the videos, we had a drought for a while. a lot of the mud is washing off. i think we were pretty well prepared for it. overall, we re going to recover from this pretty quickly. what about the damage that you re seeing to homes and to infrastructure, for example? reporter: well, mostly there s some down power lines, a few downed telephone lines. overall, the level of damage that you re seeing, at least central on the island, is not as
toll was nearly 3,000, according to some estimates. the president, of course, cast doubt on those estimates. he suggested without evidence that it was inflated. so a lot of this was to deflect blame rather than they know island. he said, by the way, time best thing that ever happened to puerto rico. you know? does he respond differently to places support him as opposed to places that don t necessarily support him in. clearly he does. compare his reaction to puerto rico and natural disasters to texas and florida and other places with natural disasters. the thing that jumped out to me from the president s twreets the words, as usual, puerto rico. another hurricane. can you imagine the president saying, wichita, kansas, tornado, as you are usual.
in reality, congressional indicated about $40 billion in wade the island only receiving a fraction of that. i ve taken better care of puerto rico than any man ever. reporter: now the trump administration is slashing $155 million in fema disaster relief funding, according to documents newly object takened by cnn, rerouting $271 million toward efforts to cut migration along the southern border with mexico. in a statement to cnn, fema claims the move will not impact ongoing returns across the country. this as trump is so determined to if i have his battle for the border wall. sources say he s encouraged aides to ignore doctor regulations, aggressively seize private property to build the wall. cnn reporting originally in the washington post that trump is promising staffers, he will pardon them if they break the
we re following all the news on hurricane dorian hitting puerto rico and the virgin islands with florida expected to be in the bull s-eye next. with americans in danger, president trump has been escalating his feud with puerto rican officials and insulting the entire u.s. territory. our white house correspondent boris sanchez is joining us. the president picked a very, very sensitive another fight. that s right. as hurricane dorian looms over puerto rico, president trump a island. all of this happening as mouming signals indicate a potential downturn in the economy going into 2020. sources say president trump is rattled by that. that he s putting intense pressure on aides and reaching for victories to try to reenergize his base into what will be a tough re-election
it is why fema has tried to work even more closely with the government here. there are about 500 fema employees on the island ready to go before dorian s effects were even felt here. and of course, the granting of the emergency declaration would have allowed them to be deployed very quickly. on one last kouchbl concern was in regards to the power grid wolf people s lights still stay on? here in the east coast, we have seen that. but power authority officials said that hush maria made them just a little bit stronger on that front. trying to rebuild as much infrastructure as possible. including installing a generator that they say would have been able to power the island if things got really bad on that front. so we ll continue to monitor that. the storms are moving, what seems like away from the eastern portion of this island. and while again, people were preparing for the worst, they were hoping for the best. wolf? all right. we ll stay in close touch with you. thank you very much. l