SAN JUAN, P.R. — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., tested attacks on the Trump administration and an economic populist message in an early presidential campaign stop in Puerto Rico Tuesday.
“Do we want a government that works for Wall Street, or a government that works for the people?” Warren said at a town hall-style event organized by her campaign in Old San Juan. “Washington corruption stands in our way, and we must make change.”
But while Warren earned applause several times from a friendly audience for the anti-Wall Street rhetoric that helped raise her profile in the Senate, she was less sure-footed in explaining how she plans to defeat President Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
When asked how Democrats could win, Warren launched into a digression that covered her biography and her view of the causes of government dysfunction. Finally she arrived at an answer.
“I don’t know anything more than to go fight for what I believe in, and hope that every single one of you will join me in that fight,” she said.
Warren mostly shied away from referring to Trump by name, preferring instead to criticize the administration as a whole.
The Massachusetts Democrat focused especially on the federal government’s response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island. She called for Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Brock Long to resign or be fired and criticized the government for the lag in disaster aid reaching the island.
“16 months later, the people of Puerto Rico have not received the help they deserve to build this island,” Warren said, referring to funding pledged by Congress to the territory’s recovery. “Puerto Rico has suffered enough. We will not let anyone sabotage your recovery, not even the president of the United States.”
Before trying out a broader campaign stump speech, Warren tailored her remarks to issues specific to Puerto Rico: the massive debt the island’s commonwealth government accumulated over several years, much of it held by hedge funds; the island’s unusual political status in the U.S., and the administration’s response to Hurricane Maria. Warren dovetailed Puerto Rico’s challenges with her vision for government.
“This is not a strategy,” she said of her appearance in San Juan. “I’m not here to talk about what happened to the economy of Puerto Rico, what happened to the children of Puerto Rico, because it poll tests well. This is my life’s work.”
During prepared remarks and while fielding questions, Warren sidestepped the contentious issue of political statehood, saying that she wanted Puerto Rico to determine its own status. The commonwealth’s two major local political parties diverge over whether to keep the current territorial status, in which Puerto Ricans do not pay most federal taxes but also can’t vote for president, have full representation in Congress, or to become a state.
Warren, a former bankruptcy law professor, also touted a bill she introduced last year to wipe out most of Puerto Rico’s debt, and blasted the law Congress and the Obama administration put in place to allow a bankruptcy-like process for the commonwealth and its $70 billion debt. That law created a federal oversight board, appointed by Congress and President Barack Obama, to oversee Puerto Rico’s fiscal recovery. The bipartisan board referred nearly all of Puerto Rico’s debt to a federal judge for proceedings similar to bankruptcy, negotiated a settlement to reduce one portion of the island’s debt by billions, and has suggested as much as $6 billion of the debt could be outright invalid. But Warren criticized the board, which is unpopular in Puerto Rico, for “austerity.”
Her attacks on Congress’ treatment of Puerto Rico’s finances echoed those of San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, an ally of Warren’s who introduced her at the town hall.
“She was against the austerity measures that are falling on us now,” said Cruz, who added, “I am a Puerto Rican national living in a U.S. colony.”
Finally, in what could be a rite of passage for 2020 presidential hopefuls, Warren invited attendees to come on stage and take selfies with her.
