President Donald Trump has always claimed the recovery efforts after Hurricane Maria were successful.

"I think we did a fantastic job in Puerto Rico," he said last week.

And on Tuesday, he took to Twitter to complain about calls for more funding for Puerto Rico:

His critics think this is nothing new. "It's about his deep belief since the hurricane that Puerto Rico is really undeserving," said Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan, an associate counsel for LatinoJustice PRLDEF.

Trump tweeted that "Puerto Rico has already been scheduled to receive more hurricane relief funding than any 'place' in history," setting that number at $91 billion.

But experts like Yarimar Bonilla, associate professor of Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, say that is simply not correct.

"$91 billion is a figure that comes from projected damages and liabilities over the span of decades," she said. "What they've given already is about 12 percent of that."

Trump's tweets come after Congress was unable to agree on how much more funding to send to Puerto Rico, with Republicans limiting the amount to nutritional assistance, while Democrats push to increase relief efforts. These failed measures included funding for Midwest states recently impacted by natural disasters.

"Cannot continue to hurt our Farmers and States with these massive payments, and so little appreciation!" tweeted the president, who's often highlighted that the island was in bad fiscal shape before the hurricane hit.

"The island was a disaster before the hurricane," Bannan said. "The hurricane just accelerated and exposed it. But the reason it was a disaster is precisely because of federal policies."

The U.S. territory is home to more than three million American citizens without a voting representative in Congress.

"So he says what you are not supposed to say," Bonilla explains, "because indeed when he refers to Puerto Rico as something foreign to the United States, that upsets a lot of people who want to point to the fact that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. And that is true, but at the same time Puerto Rico has been kept in a colonial relationship and that predates Trump."

The direct consequence of this relationship is that Puerto Rico does not enjoy the same amount of access to federal aid that states do. Some hope Trump's rhetoric pushes the conversation about Puerto Rico's status to the forefront.