Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke with voters in Puerto Rico Tuesday, three weeks after she formed a committee to explore a run for the presidency. The U.S. territory does not have a say when it comes to the Electoral College, but it does hold a primary. WGBH Radio's political reporter, Adam Reilly, was at Warren's event in San Juan. He spoke with WGBH All Things Considered anchor Barbara Howard. This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Barbara Howard: So where is the event being held?

Adam Reilly: This event is being held at the Alejandro Tapia y Rivera Theater. It is this beautiful 200-year-old theater right in the middle of Old San Juan, which is the most picturesque and well-known part of the city. And if you step outside the theater, you see the Caribbean right there. Maybe not quite a stone's throw away, but it looks directly over the Caribbean. You can see where the boats have come up to dock, cruise lines and things. So it's an incredibly picturesque spot.

Howard: Well earlier this month, Sen. Warren was in Iowa, where the first in the nation caucuses are held. And the past two weekends, she's been in New Hampshire, the site of the first primary. But why Puerto Rico?

Reilly: I think what she wants to do here is seize on what a lot of people saw as the egregious failure by the Trump administration to tend to Puerto Rico's needs in the wake of a couple of devastating hurricanes. As you know, the president has been criticized in some quarters for being callous in his response to Puerto Rico. We've seen people argue, Democrats and people on the left, that he would not have responded this way if it wasn't a primarily Latino area that had been affected. Remember, there's that infamous video of him sort of shooting baskets, throwing paper towel rolls to people who had come to get relief supplies.

Now the Trump administration is talking about cutting off Puerto Rico's disaster funding and reallocating that money to build the president's wall on the U.S.- Mexico border.

So Puerto Rico has a lot of symbolic value right now, even though it doesn't have votes in the presidential election. I think she's coming here to play on that. There is a Puerto Rican primary, so a strong showing there, when that happens, I think could help Warren argue that she is going to be able to get out the Latino vote.

Howard: What are you hearing from the folks on the ground there in Puerto Rico?

Reilly: I am hearing interest in Sen. Warren. There are some fans here, maybe not as many Warren super-fans as I run into in other places, but it seems pretty close. They also want to hear her talk about some key local issues. For example, the fact that you can't elect presidential delegates if you happen to live in Puerto Rico — they'd like to hear her weigh in on that. They’d like to hear her weigh in on whether maybe Puerto Rico's debt should be forgiven. And also the question of the Jones Act, which requires imports to the island to stop at the mainland first and adds cost to those items, whether she thinks that should perhaps be eliminated. So they want her to weigh in on things that are of interest here, that I think a lot of us on the mainland just never think about as pressing political issues.

Howard: Well what's in store for the rest of Elizabeth Warren's trip there, to Puerto Rico?

Reilly: This is the only event on her public schedule, so it seems that she is going to get out of town after this. It's possible that she will have some private events that are not on the press’s list. I think she did that in Iowa, when I was covering her there, and it's a way for her to interact with voters without the massive press run that's already following her. So that may be in the works, but judging from the flight down — I flew JetBlue out of Logan, and she was on that JetBlue flight, just sitting there on the aisle — so if she goes the way she came, she'll be taking a commercial flight back to Boston.

Read more: Five Big Takeaways From Elizabeth Warren's Trip To Iowa

Howard: OK. Well you know, looking beyond Puerto Rico, the Democratic field got a little more crowded yesterday with the entry of California Sen. Kamala Harris. How does Harris' candidacy affect Elizabeth Warren?

Reilly: Well I think the conventional wisdom is that Harris is a challenge for Warren. You know, she's a dynamic, charismatic woman of color running at a time when being a woman of color may actually be an asset in the Democratic Party. I did hear an interesting theory posited by a member of the audience I spoke with who said that she thought Hillary Clinton was the victim of misogyny in 2016, and that maybe with more women running — including Kamala Harris, Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand — that maybe that would be diluted a bit for any individual female candidate as the race takes shape now.

Howard: OK. Thanks for joining us Adam, and stay warm. I'm sure you are.

Reilly: It's very nice. I don't mind a temperature change.

Howard: That's WGBH Radio's Adam Reilly, speaking with us from San Juan, Puerto Rico. That's the latest stop for Elizabeth Warren, three weeks after she announced an exploratory committee for a 2020 run for the White House. This is WGBH’s All Things Considered.