Wearing a shirt emblazoned with the word “Nasty,” the mayor of Puerto Rico’s biggest city ripped into President Donald Trump on Wednesday for his response to the devastation left on the U.S. territory by Hurricane Maria.
Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz wore the shirt during an interview with Spanish-language station Univision.
"When someone is bothered by someone claiming (a) lack of drinking water, lack of medicine for the sick and lack of food for the hungry, that person has problems too deep to be explained in an interview," Cruz said, according to Newsweek. "What is really nasty is that anyone would turn their back on the Puerto Rican people."
Critics of Trump first started embracing the “nasty” moniker in 2016, when as the Republican presidential nominee he called Democratic rival Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” during a presidential debate.
Over the weekend he used the word to describe Cruz, claiming that she was criticizing him at the urging of Democrats.
“The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump,” he wrote.
It’s not the first time Cruz has used her clothing to send a message. She donned a shirt that had the phrase, “Help us, we are dying,” on it for an interview Friday with CNN.
The mayor has been a prominent figure since Hurricane Maria started barreling toward Puerto Rico. The storm made landfall on the island on Sept. 20, bringing devastating winds and torrential rains. More than 30 deaths on the island have been attributed to the hurricane, which also knocked out Puerto Rico’s entire power grid and left many of its 3.4 million residents without potable water.
Cruz has been vocal in her criticism of Trump, praising White House officials, but criticizing the president for the administration’s overall response.
Trump visited Puerto Rico on Tuesday and faced criticism after he was caught on video throwing rolls of paper towels to victims of the storm who were waiting for the president to pass out supplies.
He told officials that they should be “very proud” that the death toll from the storm was so low, unlike the deaths seen in “a real catastrophe, like (2005’s Hurricane) Katrina.”
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