San Juan, October 5  (RHC)--The mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, strongly denounced Donald Trump after the president visited the island, calling him the “miscommunicator in chief” and “insulting.”

“He was insulting to the people of Puerto Rico,” Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz told the press after meeting Trump face-to-face at a briefing with Puerto Rican leaders and the president.  Beyond the briefing, Trump also toured damaged areas and helped distribute supplies, flicking paper towels into a crowd with the motion of a jump shot in basketball.  All of it, Cruz said, was disingenuous.

“This was a PR, 17-minute meeting. There was no exchange with anybody, with none of the mayors,” the mayor said. “And in fact, this terrible and abominable view of him throwing paper towels and throwing provisions at people, it really — it does not embody the spirit of the American nation.”

The mayor and Trump butted heads ahead of the president’s Tuesday visit, a feud that began last week when Cruz appeared on US television, begging for more help from the federal government and slamming the glowing appraisal of the recovery effort that acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke had given earlier in the week.

Trump then lashed out at the mayor, writing online that she had been instructed by Democrats to attack the president and that she and other Puerto Rican leaders “want everything to be done for them.”