It’s such an easily refutable lie, and yet she told it and the media printed it. The New Yorker published a puff-piece profile by Jon Lee Anderson on the Trump-hating mayor of San Juan, datelined October 12, that led with a lie by Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz that President Donald Trump wouldn’t look her in the eyes when the two met during the President’s day-trip to Puerto Rico on October 3rd following the devastating hit by Hurricane Maria.
Video taken of the meeting shows Trump lowering himself and leaning his face close to Cruz’s face so he can make direct,close eye contact with her as they shook hands. Apparently Anderson and the New Yorker did not fact check this mendacious claim by the mayor which was easily debunked in a quick search of videos of the meeting.
Screen image shows direct eye contact by President Trump with Mayor Cruz, via Time/You Tube.
In a tweet promoting the article, the New Yorker wrote, “When Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, met Trump, he avoided direct eye contact by staring over her head.”
When Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, met Trump, he avoided direct eye contact by staring over her head. https://t.co/XNhTNiwWF2
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) October 15, 2017
The article opens with:
The mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Carmen Yulín Cruz, is a petite woman with a large personality. Yulín, as she is known, has earned international renown since Hurricane Maria for criticizing Donald Trump’s lackadaisical response to the catastrophe. She has at the same time earned the ire of the President, who, in typically petty fashion, has lashed out at her several times in response to her criticisms, at one point tweeting that she had been “nasty” to him. Soon afterward, she appeared in public wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with that same word.
Last week, despite her feud with Trump, Yulín joined the island’s other mayors for a brief meet-and-greet session with the President during his hasty visit Puerto Rico. When her turn came to shake hands with Trump, she recalled to me recently, she said to him, “It’s nothing personal, Mr. President, it’s about the people of Puerto Rico.” But Trump didn’t respond to that, she said, and avoided direct eye contact by staring over her head. “That wasn’t hard for him to do, since I’m only five feet tall,” she said, laughing.
The article continues with this interesting descriptor of Mayor Cruz (all she’s lacking is an olive-drab Castro cap and army jacket):
…Yulín, who is fifty-four years old, has a ready-for-action style: when she entered the stadium, she went straight into a huddle with some young volunteers wearing matching T-shirts and led them in a rousing chant. She wore a white, military-style shirt with epaulettes and green outdoor pants tucked into tall combat boots.
When we were introduced, I jokingly expressed my pleasure at meeting such a “nasty” person. Yulín smiled. “An insult from Mr. Trump is a badge of courage, thank God,” she said. She had lived on the mainland for twelve years, she said, and from that experience she knew that “there’s a stark contrast between a country with a big heart and a President with a big mouth, who doesn’t seem to have any limits on how he disrespects people that do not think or believe or act as he expects them to.”
Oh, wait. Here’s a photo of comrade Mayor wearing a Castro cap and army-style jacket a few days ago.
https://twitter.com/TundraTabloids/status/918743095168159744
This video posted by NBC News shows President Trump lowering himself and leaning in to make direct eye contact with Mayor Cruz as they shake hands. And, contrary to the mayor’s claim Trump did not respond to her saying “It’s nothing personal, Mr. President, it’s about the people of Puerto Rico,” Trump can be seen saying to her, “Thank you.”
"It's not about politics," San Juan Mayor Cruz tells Pres. Trump during his visit to Puerto Rico. https://t.co/ltQeITT6oo pic.twitter.com/4876jgrk35
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) October 3, 2017
This version of the meeting was posted by Time.
If Mayor Cruz will lie about President Trump regarding their meeting, it leaves one to wonder what else is she lying about?
As for Jon Lee Anderson and the New Yorker unquestioningly publishing Mayor Cruz’s lie? Perhaps a clue can be found in Anderson’s ‘about’ at the end of the article: “Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer, began contributing to The New Yorker in 1998. He is the author of “The Lion’s Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan and Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life.”
