San Juan Mayor Slams Trump, Wears 'Nasty' T-Shirt In Apparent Response To President

After President Donald Trump criticized the storm-ravished island of Puerto Rico, its mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz, clapped back Wednesday when she sported a t-shirt that read "nasty" during a television interview.

Cruz donned the shirt during an interview with Jorge Ramos on Univision’s "Al Punto" and said it was in response to remark's made by the president, who described her as "nasty" after she criticized him for failing to provide adequate relief following Hurricane Maria.

"When someone is bothered by someone claiming 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 in Spanish during the interview. "What is truly nasty is that anyone would turn their back on the Puerto Rican people."

"Lo que es 'nasty' es que se de la espalda al pueblo puertorriqueño": alcaldesa de San Juan @CarmenYulinCruz pic.twitter.com/f0U92cln0F

— Al Punto Univision (@AlPunto) October 4, 2017

Trump used the term to describe Cruz during televised interviews and on Twitter. His use of the word "nasty" is a callback to the 2016 campaign when he called Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton a "nasty woman" during a debate.

The president questioned the mayor’s leadership ability after Cruz criticized Trump and asked him to focus on relief efforts for the island during a Sept. 29 press conference.

"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," Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday.

His criticism comes on the heels of two major hurricanes, Irma and Maria, which ripped through Puerto Rico last month. Maria is considered the strongest storm to hit Puerto Rico in over 90 years. The Category 4 storm left about 3.4 million residents without running water and completely without electricity.

Trump visited the island Tuesday where he compared its devastation to Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 storm that slammed Louisiana in 2005. The hurricane killed over 1,800 people and caused about $108 billion in damages.

"Every death is a horror but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous — hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here, with really a storm that was just totally overpowering, nobody's ever seen anything like this," Trump said to government officials.

"What is your death count as of this moment? 17? 16 people certified, 16 people versus in the thousands," he said. "You can be very proud of all of your people and all of our people working together. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people. You can be very proud. Everybody around this table and everybody watching can really be very proud of what's taken place in Puerto Rico."

Meanwhile, officials have been prepping for waves of residents that look to depart Puerto Rico for the U.S. Florida Gov. Rick Scott advised the state to ready itself for the extra people as well as for necessitates it may need to house them.

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello also stressed the importance of preparation. He warned that the mass exodus of people from Puerto Rico could last awhile unless the island received sufficient federal aid.

"We can't do anything about that in the short term," he told reporters Wednesday. Referring to the number of residents he expected will leave, he said it could be "in the millions."