Chris Cuomo to Mick Mulvaney: What Is Fake About Our Reporting on Puerto Rico?

EXCERPT:

CUOMO: "Most of its held by mutual funds and kind mom and pop investors. So I don't know how he would do this. We'll talk about if the promise should be taken on its face. Let’s bring in the White House budget director, Mr. Mulvaney. He was with the president down there. Thanks for joining us. Mick, let’s start with Puerto Rico specifically."
MULVANEY: "Sure."
CUOMO: "I want to put up the president’s most recent tweet from this morning about this, if we can put it up for Mick, so we can get to the substance of it, which is where the president was talking about the recovery efforts and he says, you know, there’s some fake reporting going on, but in general it was good to be there and see what is going on. This matters, Mick, because the reason we go down there, and let me just read this for people if they are not looking at their screens. Put it back up, please. 'Wow', is how the tweet starts — whenever you can get it up there I will read it. The -- the -- the point of the tweet is that -- 'A great day in Puerto Rico yesterday. While some of the news coverage is Fake, most showed great warmth and friendship.' Now, Mick, the reason that matters is, we go to the places to show the reality so people can connect to the need and justify the cause for help. You were there, you understand the situation well. What is fake about our reporting about the depth of dispair and the need for better relief?"
MULVANEY: "Sure. I thanks for that question. I think that the frustration that the president and many of us in the administration sort of have on the way that news coverage has handled this, is all you all show is the bad stuff. We spent several hours on the island yesterday afternoon, got a chance for example to get briefs by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the folks working on the electrical grid, all the work that they are doing, on everythink that is going right. And by the way, some of the efforts down there are absolutely fantastic. there's more than 10,000 federal workers on the island right now. We met with mayors of large and small towns. There’s a lot of good things happening. I think the president's frustration, our frustration as a administration is that the media seems to only want to focus on the bad things and not show both sides of the story. I think, that’s a fair frustration to have."