A Bunch of Puerto Rican College Republicans Are Trying Really Hard to Get a Trump Statue Built in San Juan

Jun 17, 2019
7:42 AM

Over the weekend, The Daily Caller interviewed Melvin Soto Vázquez from the College Republican Federation of Puerto Rico about why his group has suddenly been peddling a six-month-old GoFundMe that wants to build a statue of Donal Trump in San Juan’s Walkway of the Presidents.

Soto Vázquez had nine minutes with TDC’s Stephanie Hamill to lay his case for a Trump statue. He also took the time to blame the “liberal” media for incorrectly reporting about Trump’s efforts to help Puerto Rico. Huh? Does Soto Vázquez actually follow real news? Or did he completely forget about the thousands of lives loss from a natural disaster that President Trump downplayed and even lied about when he was (wait for it) visiting Puerto Rico for a few hours?

The island’s Walkway of Presidents featured those U.S. presidents who have visited Puerto Rico while in office: Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford (wait, what?), and Barack Obama.

Since Trump visited Puerto Rico after Hurricane María, or better stated, he spoke at an airplane hanger and then tossed paper towels in Guaynabo City, Soto Vázquez argued that Trump should be part of the walkway. The Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Virginia co-sponsored the effort.

The government of Puerto Rico has no money for a Trump statue (hello, debt crisis), so enter the GoFundMe fund (should we repeat the the fund was established six months ago), which is trying really hard to raise $45,000. And organizers are actually serious about this.

As the petition states:

Finally, no matter what his detractors say, following the horrific hurricane of 2017, Puerto Rico is being rebuilt better than it was before, and that rebuilding is due in no small part to the actions of President Trump, who has repeatedly expressed his abiding love for the people of Puerto Rico, such as on September 27, 2017 when he declared that “Puerto Rico is very important to me, and Puerto Rico—the people are fantastic people. I grew up in New York, so I know many people from Puerto Rico. I know many Puerto Ricans. And these are great people, and we have to help them.”

That is why it is now altogether fitting that patriotic Americans in Puerto Rico and throughout the nation undertake this joint campaign to build and facilitate the inauguration of a historic commemorative statue of President Trump on Puerto Rico’s Walkway of the Presidents.

As of this posting, and even with The Daily Caller’s boost, the fund has raised just $6,368. This is over six months of being online. We are sure it will raise more money, but we’ll take a moment to share our collective thoughts about all this: