Recovery success. I think puerto rico was incredibly successful. And i actually think it was one of the best jobs thats ever been done with respect to what this is all about. I think the puerto rico was an incredible, unsung success. No ones saying that success because its not true. Billionaire president versus a trillion dollar company, weve also got that in sight, apple set to unveil a new slate of iphones today, but with the president s trade wars threatening higher price, will the company be forced to think different . And ten years ago this week, i remember it well, Lehman Brothers collapsed, setting off a chain of events leading to the worst financial crisis since the great depression. So after a decade, have we learned any lessons . You know, we have got to begin with the the storm of a lifetime. Max, thinking, am i going to have a home to come back to . God spare us, spare myrtle beach, spare everybody whos in line with this. Because this looks like its going to be the worst on
Report reporter tremain lee. Miss michigan is here with me. Well hear from those in the bar tonight about what they think of the president. Our Special Coverage continues tomorrow night when we bring your our town hall with flint native Michael Moore. You do not want to miss that. But we begin tonight with a stark illustration of just whats at stake with the potentially catastrophic hurricane now bearing down on the east coast. Prompting mandatory Evacuation Orders from more than a million people. The president of the United States today sat in the oval office and bragged about his performance in dealing with the biggest disaster he has overseen as president , the hurricane that devastated puerto rico. I think puerto rico was incredibly successful. Puerto rico was actually our toughest one of all because its an island. So you just you cant truck
things onto it. Everythings by boat. We moved a hospital into puerto rico, a tremendous Military Hospital in the form of a ship. You know that
what lessons do we take from what happened in puerto rico? how do we apply the lessons is we learned from puerto rico? i think puerto rico was incredibly successful. i actually think it was one of the best jobs that s ever been done with respect to what there is all about. i think that puerto rico was an incredible, unsung success. texas we have been given a-pluses for. florida we ve been given a-pluses for. i think in a certain way the best job we did was puerto rico but nobody would understand that. i mean it s harder to understand. reporter: what is even harder to understand is how the president could say such a thing on the very same day we discovered this staggering example of failure and waste.
an incredible, unsung success. i think in a certain way the best job we did was puerto rico, but nobody would understand that. chris: but this summer fema did an after-action report that said this: the agency could have severity of hurricanes irma and maria would cause long-term, significant damage to the territory s infrastructure. so which is it? well, look, i mean, our after-action report is an open and honest assessment. but the way that this works, and i keep saying this, emergency management or successful disaster recovery is a chair with four legs. one leg is the federal government, the second leg is the state government, the third leg is the infrastructure, and the fourth is neighbor helping neighbor. i think what you saw in the legs were present so the chair s stable going into that. obviously, in puerto rico there were several parts of that chair
puerto rico was an incredible, unsung success. reporter: the reality? maria was the deadliest hurricane in modern american history, killing nearly 3,000 people. the mayor of san juan telling abc news, he never got it. he will never get it. and today, the president still engaged in a war of words, insisting his administration did an unappreciated great job in puerto rico and calling the mayor totally incompetent. oops, he did it again. here he goes again. you know, he doesn t understand that this isn t about him and about his ego. as the first squalls begin to fall here, cecilia vega joining us live from the white house tonight. and cecilia, the president s aides want everyone here along the coastline to know that the president is prepared and the government s watching. reporter: david, he s receiving regular updates, he s talking to state and local officials. he canceled two campaign events because of this storm. and just a few minutes ago, he said he s already receivin