Lin-Manuel Miranda defends saying Trump is 'going straight to hell'

This post and its headline have been updated to better reflect the context of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s original tweets about President Donald Trump

Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda is not backing away from comments he made earlier this month about Donald Trump “going straight to hell” over his response to Hurricane Maria

“I wish I could tell you this was an impulsive tweet,” Miranda said on Friday’s CBS This Morning. “The only reason this made news is that normally my Twitter is full of dog videos and dad jokes and audio snippets of my son making up songs. I really try to be a bright light as much as possible on Twitter … Stay informed, stay engaged, and then I’ll be the silver lining over here. Then again, I’ve never seen the President of the United States attack the victims of a natural disaster. That has no precedent for me, so those words coming out of me also has no precedent.”

Trump’s response to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico was much slower than similar disasters in Texas and Florida. When he finally did start commenting on the island’s plight, he mostly focused on the island’s debt to Wall Street (which he later said could be wiped out) and fired back at Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of Puerto Rican capital San Juan, for criticizing him. It was, in fact, Trump’s critical tweets about Cruz that launched Miranda’s tirade against him — particularly since Trump was then spending the weekend at his New Jersey golf club while Cruz was meeting with her suffering constituents and begging for help. Trump eventually did visit Puerto Rico this week.

Miranda has taken it upon himself to be a voice for the many island inhabitants still suffering in the fallout from Hurricane Maria. On Friday, Miranda released the song “Almost Like Praying,” a star-studded charity single to fund disaster relief.