There are so many instances where history repeats itself. When such a prominent person makes a statement, so prescient, hitting home so hard, that it’s easy (and fun) to hear it again:
I think you all know that I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help. A great many of the current problems on the farm were caused by government-imposed embargoes and inflation, not to mention government’s long history of conflicting and haphazard policies.
The Gipper provides a perfect narration of just how ineffective and unhelpful the government is.
News about President Donald Trump’s actions regarding Puerto Rico is the latest example.
The president, according to a White House official who spoke with the AP, has shown the door to five of the seven voting members of the island’s Financial Oversight and Management Board. It happened in a single aftertoon, former figureheads for the island’s financial future were relieved of duty. Trump’s “You’re Fired” was fired at Arthur González, Cameron McKenzie, Betty Rosa, Juan Sabater, and Luis Ubiñas. The only members remaining are Republican-appointed John Nixon and Andrew Biggs, along with the governor’s non-voting representative.
In plain language, the White House stated that the board had become bloated, expensive, and ineffective, to put it mildly.
From the beginning, la junta was marketed as fiscal salvation. In reality, it became an unelected colonial bureaucracy, handing down austerity edicts from D.C. at the same time Puerto Ricans lived under blackouts, unemployment, and crumbling infrastructure.
Trump made a significant statement with this move: accountability has finally arrived.
The Board Was Never for the People
In 2016, Congress created the Financial Oversight and Management Board through the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA). The act’s goal was to fix the island’s $70 billion debt crisis after Puerto Rico failed to meet their financial obligations.
The board started operating like the compliance department for a Wall Street hedge fund. Public services were slashed, pensions were frozen, and local municipalities were squeezed, while consultants and legal firms received substantial amounts of money. Most islanders never saw any benefits; what they saw were fewer teachers, fewer nurses, fewer jobs, and, of course, more debt.
In what has to be one of the most lucrative part-time jobs outside of Hunter’s work for Burisma, board members ensured they were paid a salary of $200,000 per year. Outside law firms charged tens of millions, and as the austerity deepened, homes remained in the dark.
Legal Hurdles, But Moral Clarity
PROMESA stipulates that only the president can remove board members, and then “for cause.” Already, legal analysts are signaling challenges in court, arguing that Trump lacks statutory authority to fire them without documented malfeasance or ethical breach.
However, moral clarity doesn’t always wait for legal consensus. We live in a nation where power comes from the people, not from insulated, appointed boards. “Cause” is apparent when the people themselves fail.
President Trump has said repeatedly that he’s not a politician. Verbally, he’s a bull in a china shop, and his actions here are bold and unapologetic, which reflect the will of millions of people who’ve watched Puerto Rico suffer under a constant carousel of lawyers, lobbyists, and our favorite demographic, unelected technocrats.
The Pattern of Exploitation
PROMESA wasn’t the beginning of Puerto Rico’s pain; it started several decades earlier, with federal tax incentives that built a short-lived pharmaceutical boom, which vanished with the stroke of a pen in the 1990s. That collapse led directly to Puerto Rico’s dependence on debt to fund basic operations.
Paper labeled safe and secure flooded the market, with bond underwriters and rating agencies running the faucet. Like scavengers, hedge funds swooped in, kicking the carcass down the path; local officials impersonated Popeye’s Wimpy, paying later for a hamburger today. They borrowed and spent money as if tomorrow would never come.
Tomorrow arrived.
Who was left to pay the tab? The Puerto Rican worker.
Remember, the oversight board was the mechanic, hired to fix everything.
Unfortunately, they picked the wrong repair shop because bankruptcy lawyers, not visionaries, showed up. Solvency was promised, but when the grid collapsed, the silence was explosively quiet.
PREPA and the Power Game
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, PREPA, was the symbol for everything wrong. The public treasury was drained because of years of mismanagement, shady fuel contracts, and corrupt procurement schemes.
Need some proof? I give you the reactions to Hurricane Maria. Whitefish Energy, a small Montana firm with two employees, was awarded a no-bid contract. After millions were committed, public outcry led to the deal being canceled. Another billion-dollar contract, this time with Cobra Acquisitions, led to bribery charges involving officials from FEMA.
The people of Puerto Rico had no power, no clean water, and no answers; just a cast of 3 million people, trapped in a biblical B-movie, carrying the weight of the empire. Meanwhile, the stars delivered lines from palaces.
Vested with near-total control over fiscal decisions, the oversight board simply stood by, acting like good little bureaucrats, hiring other consultants as a response to every scandal.
Austerity for the People, Paydays for the Board
As schools closed and hospitals begged for generators to keep the lights on, the board spent over $1.5 billion on professional services between 2017 and 2022. Residents, working their butts off, endured deep cuts to their pensions and lived with public layoffs and fee hikes. Remember, this was the backdrop for board members collecting six-figure salaries while law firms cashed in on the bankruptcy process.
When you’re unaccountable, the math never has to add up to the voters; explanations are not necessary.
When islanders protested in 2019, forcing the governor to resign, the board didn’t blink because their contracts were still in effect, leaving their power untouched.
Trump’s Move Breaks the Cycle
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. President Trump broke that cycle by firing five of seven board members, dismantling the status quo. Those people weren’t simply bureaucrats; they were Denethor II, who had ruled as Gondor’s Steward for 35 years. The board was the guardian of a system that exploited Puerto Rico as if it were a fiscal colony.
Their departure opens a window, not just for reform, but for something we all agree with: Sovereignty over their own lives.
Starting in 3 … 2 … 1 …, Critics and the legal beagles on legacy media channels will scream their fool heads off about legality and precedent.
Puerto Ricans are long past the need to hear lectures from the same ruling class that lived large while ignoring the island’s decay for twenty years.
They need results.
The Next Chapter Must Begin With Power
If Trump’s summer cleaning means anything, it must be followed by accountability, not merely in board appointments, but also results. Real electrical power delivery, infrastructure repairs, and public services.
Puerto Ricans no longer need billion-dollar contracts from firms run by the board’s friends in Washington. Injury followed by insult, they don’t need rate hikes for electricity that never arrived. They no longer need to see board members who visited the vast unwashed once a quarter and speak using dialects used in committee rooms, vernacular that no locals understood.
What Puerto Rico needs is simple and straightforward action: Working streetlights, safe schools, and running water.
Know what they don’t need? Debt ratios written on whiteboards in Washington, D.C.
Final Thoughts
President Trump didn’t pull a technical maneuver by deciding to gut the board. Instead, it will prove to be a gut check, because for far too long, heroes claiming they’re there to rescue Puerto Rico have repeatedly dropped the ball.
Reckoning is finally at hand.
If this board couldn’t deliver results, then its members didn’t have any business cashing checks, while the system defending them is also what’s broken.
The president took the first steps, while the next must come from those who understand how true reform is measured: not on balance sheets, but in ensuring that Puerto Ricans who flip the switch no longer need to function with candles, feeding their children.
We all know what happens next. Talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, and CBS will hold panel discussions declaring Trump is continuing the path towards tyranny. Like constrictor snakes with jaws that dislocate, AOC and the Squad, Congress critters, will catch a case of the vapors looking for a fainting couch, while their mouths are open far enough to swallow the cameras inches from their face, screaming loud enough to make ears bleed. But they all forget one simple fact.
Their president, and ours (thank God!), is acting like a true leader, helping people when they need it.
If you’re tired of watching unelected boards run roughshod over citizens while legacy media defends the grift, support platforms that fight back. Join the ranks of those who say no to business as usual. Subscribe to PJ Media VIP today and help us keep exposing what others hide:
