What's Missing From White House Press Conferences

Like most of the rest of the reporters in the nation, I have never covered a presidential press conference. It’s not surprising, since almost all of them take place in Washington, where most reporters will never get a chance to work, let alone be assigned to cover the White House. *

Still, I keep making a list in my head of the questions that reporters should ask at the daily briefings, and whenever Donald Trump holds still in a public place long enough to be interviewed.

It is, I think, a list worth sharing. If you read all the way to the bottom, I promise to share something else - my sure-fire plan to fix the problems still plaguing Puerto Rico, which our nation seems incapable of addressing, certainly not in time for this year’s wave of hurricanes.

Here goes.

• “Mr. President (or Sarah, who speaks for him),  you say a lot of people feel that this Russia probe is a witch hunt. Or a lot of people feel you should get tougher on foreign imports. Or build the border wall right away. Or agree that children who are taken across our border - no matter how young - are automatically criminals and should be taken from their parents and locked up. My question, sir, is could you please name some of these people, so that we can see where you are getting your information from and how reliable it is. Do they all support you wholeheartedly, or do some of them have qualms?   It would be good to know.

* “Mr. President, you say we could solve the immigration problem immediately, if only the Democrats would sit down and work with your party. But, they aren’t allowed into the  meetings where your party is making policy. So, sir, who gets the blame? Is it Paul Ryan or is in Mitch McConnell? Or someone else?”  Hillary, I think,  is no longer in government.

* Mr. President, you say that no one is tougher on Russia than you are. And, there are places - like Afghanistan - where local leaders spent years fighting Russian troops before they chased Russia out and they started fighting us. Are we actually at war with Russia now? WIll you impose sanctions at least as strict as the ones you have imposed on Canada and Mexico, or the ones that were imposed by the European Union after Russia annexed the Crimea?”

“And, sir, could you please tell us what sanctions are currently in place against Russia?” 

• Mr. President, I know the economy is doing great (you said so) and black unemployment hasn’t been this low ever (you said so) and the Democrat Party just refuses to go along with any bills you propose (you said so) and it doesn’t matter because Republicans control both houses of Congress (a verifiable fact) and you have the solid support of nearly half the nation’s Republicans.”

      “ But, sir, lots of people are saying that as the summer drags on and gasoline prices continue to rise, as stores keep closing and people keep having to work two jobs to pay their mortgage, and as our school taxes go up and up because the states are no longer getting as much federal aid, there will be anger in our nation. So, sir, who gets the blame, and will you tell us before the elections in November?”

See? Wouldn’t you like to see the White House Press Corps ask just one of those questions? I bet the President would say “Thank you. Next.”

        Now, My Sure-Fire plan to fix the problems in Puerto Rico.

First, let’s all agree that we still don’t really know just what has happened in Puerto Rico since it was hit by the worst hurricane in 80 years on Sept 20, 2017. Maris struck with winds of up to 155 miles an hour, most of the island’s population of 4.5 million was left without electric power and hospitals were overwhelmed, pharmacies immediately ran low on drugs, and thousands of households went without clean water or power for months or longer. All well reported.

Official damage numbers are either still vague or badly reported. In October, President Trump said the death toll - then officially just 16, and later raised to 64 - was much less than the 1,837 people who died after a hurricane struck New Orleans.

Now it is being widely reported that a new Harvard study shows Hurricane Maria killed 4,645 people, 70 times the official death toll. Some stories said that was a likely number, or that it could be more, or possibly less. Still, 4,645 seems an awfully precise figure.

So, let’s look more closely. Or, to give credit where it is due, let’s look at FiveThirtyEight, which did the real work of looking at it. (If you don’t occasionally look at FiveThirtyEight, you should. You learn a lot. Especially about sports.)

In this case, the number 4,645 is just the midpoint in a range of deaths that has a low of 793 and a high of 8,498. It comes from looking at 3,300 families and finding 38 deaths in the months following the storm, then trying to see what the impact on the island’s whole population might be. If you want to know more, go to the source.

You could also look at how difficult it has been to figure out just how much damage was done to Puerto Rico. Pick any number you like - millions, hundreds of millions, all the way up to 77 billion. We do know that 200,000 Puerto Ricans just left and came to the United States to get away from the mess, but that number is, as we say in the journalism trade, a little soft.

Now, we do know some people are still without water or power of both, or had it and then lost it again. No one is saying that federal officials there are doing a great job, except maybe our President. Look that up too, if you want.

S, what to do? What to do about the lives of two or three million people - all United States Citizens - who have been living with little food or water or electricity since September. What about the ones why are sick, and have no hospitals they can go to?

Well, here is my plan. So simple, it is brilliant. Send a lot of planes and boats there, and bring them all to the United States. Now they couldn’t go to small villages or towns - at least not at first - so we will send them to big population centers, places which have political clout so that our government will really get on the job of rebuilding the island.

So, where would they go? Well, I would first put a half million or so in Lexington, Ky, near Fort Knox and the home state of MItch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate. He certainly knows when it is time to act on things. He has told us so more than once.

Another half million or so could go to Wisconsin. Milwaukee already has almost  600,000 people and Madison has more than 230,000, and the state could use the extra population. And Paul Ryan, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, could get a good first-hand look of the size of the problem he has been dealing with since the storm.

Now, there will still be a lot of other people to relocate, and for that let me suggest a fine rural area - the wide, wide spaces of California’s Central Valley region. Warm weather, lots of agriculture, an area just like Puerto Rico. There is even a public works project there that could whisk all those out of work people to jobs in San Francisco in about an hour - the federally-funded bullet train project. And the local congressman, Republican Devin Nunez, is already familiar with the cost overruns that have driven that project up by more than 20 billion.

With all those billions in federal money slushing around, it should be easy to divert some of it to housing and food and care of all those people, at least until Puerto Rico can be rebuilt. Of course, it will be a one-time job. Federal policies no longer let us consider the impact of global warming on construction projects.

Hope the Navy doesn’t have a base there.

• Truth be told, I actually did cover some events in Washington - the anti-war marches and protests, and some of the anti-discrimination protests over the lack of housing, jobs and police brutality against minorities. After half a century, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

* Second truth be told, I was part of a mob of a dozen reporters penned into a secure location at an airport in Westhampton Beach when President Clinton and his wife walked past on the way to a fund-raiser or two, and he did stop briefly to chat and answer a few questions, but I didn’t get to ask one.