On September 30, Lin-Manuel Miranda fired off some very uncharacteristic tweets. Usually, his Twitter account is full of news about his projects, cute posts about his son, and generally positive updates. But on that day, he told President Donald Trump – who insinuated that Puerto Ricans were lazy and criticized the leadership of San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz – that he’d go “straight to hell.” Recently, Lin-Manuel discussed the surprising tweets and explained that unlike Trump’s messages, he didn’t send them off into cyberspace spontaneously.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Miranda saw an incredible response from people, both on Puerto Rico and the mainland. “It’s people breaking their piggy banks, it’s employers matching employee donations,” he said during Good Morning America on Friday, according to Mediaite. But then, he came across Trump’s set of tweets, which accuses the people of Puerto Rico of wanting “everything to be done for them.” And Miranda broke.
“And yet I’ve never seen a sitting president attack the victims of a natural disaster before,” he said. “That is without precedent and that is why my words were without precedent.” Miranda acknowledges that the tweets went viral because he rarely gets political on Twitter and many were caught off guard. But at the same time, Miranda used his platform (he has 1.8 million followers) to call out one of Trump’s most blatant lies.
Check out the interview below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHu24tcQaGc