President Donald Trump on Thursday rejected the official conclusion that nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico from last year’s Hurricane Maria, arguing without evidence that the number was wrong and calling it a plot by Democrats to make him “look as bad as possible.”
As Hurricane Florence approached the Carolinas, the president picked a fresh fight over the administration’s response to the Category 4 storm that smashed into the U.S. territory last September. Trump visited the island in early October to assess the situation amid widespread criticism over the recovery efforts.
“When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000,” Trump tweeted.
He added: “This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico.”
3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018
…..This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018
Puerto Rico’s governor last month raised Maria’s official death toll from 64 to 2,975 after an independent study found that the number of people who succumbed in the sweltering aftermath had been severely undercounted. Previous reports from the Puerto Rican government said the number was closer to 1,400.
Trump’s comments drew swift criticism from elected officials and residents of the island, where blackouts remain common, 60,000 homes still have makeshift roofs and 13 percent of municipalities lack stable phone or internet service.
Gov. Ricardo Rossello said in a Facebook post in Spanish, “the victims of Puerto Rico, and the people of Puerto Rico in general, do not deserve to be questioned about their pain.”
Rossello said he left the analysis of the deaths in the hands of experts and accepted their estimate as the official death toll. “I trust that this process was carried out properly,” he said.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, a Democrat who has sparred with Trump, tweeted that “Trump is so vain he thinks this is about him. NO IT IS NOT.” Rep. Luis Gutierrez, whose parents were Puerto Rican immigrants, spoke on the House floor in front of a printout of the Puerto Rican flag, saying Trump is “delusional” and incapable or “empathy or basic human decency.”
Trump began to focus on Hurricane Florence earlier this week, calling for an Oval Office briefing with the FEMA director to warn about the threat. But as the hurricane began to dominate news coverage, the administration’s efforts after Hurricane Maria came under new scrutiny and began to infuriate Trump, according to two Republican advisers close to the White House who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
When a reporter asked Trump about Maria in the Oval Office, he swiftly unleashed fact-challenged defense of his response to the hurricane. That led the cable news coverage that evening, further angering the president, according to one of the people.
Trump told confidants that the media was underplaying the challenging circumstances in Puerto Rico and trying to exploit the storm to attack him. He told one adviser that he felt that he media “would stop at nothing” to undermine him and blamed local authorities for their inept response.
The estimate of nearly 3,000 dead in the six months after Maria devastated Puerto Rico and knocked out the entire electrical grid was made by researchers with the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. The study said the original estimates were so low because doctors on the island had not been trained to properly classify deaths after a natural disaster.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides doctors with a set of recommendations for counting such deaths as those caused by natural disasters, but the guidelines were almost never followed by Puerto Rican doctors in the chaos after the storm.
Puerto Rico’s government, which is neither Republican nor Democratic, but run by the New Progressive party, a pro-statehood, Puerto Rico-only party, accepted the 2,975 number as a legitimate estimate of the storm’s true toll.
Throughout the week, the president has repeatedly defended his administration’s efforts in Puerto Rico, calling it it an “incredible, unsung success” and renewed his verbal spat with Cruz, the San Juan mayor.
Hurricane Maria hit last year as the Trump administration was feeling positive about the handling of massive hurricanes in Florida and Texas last summer. Trump believed those recovery efforts were a success story he could use to turn the tide of negative press stories after a troubled August, said one official who was not authorized to speak publicly. Then came Maria and devastation in Puerto Rico, where a slow federal response was complicated by logistical concerns and preexisting economic and infrastructure deficiencies on the island territory.
But Trump, that official said, was unwilling to admit even internally that more needed to be done on the island.
Rossello, seized on Trump’s use of the word “successful” and said in a statement at the time: “No relationship between a colony and the federal government can ever be called ‘successful’ because Puerto Ricans lack certain inalienable rights enjoyed by our fellow Americans in the states.”
Puerto Rico has been a U.S. territory since 1898. Its inhabitants are U.S. citizens, though they are barred from voting in presidential elections and have only one congressional representative with limited voting powers.
Rossello said Maria was “the worst natural disaster in our modern history” and that work remained before the island could move on to other stages of recovery. He also said he was waiting for Trump to respond to a petition to help Puerto Rico complete work on emergency housing restoration programs and debris removal.
Trump, who has struggled to express public empathy at times of national crises, sparked outrage during his post-Maria visit when he feuded with San Juan mayor and passed out paper towels to victims like he was shooting baskets.
After that visit, Trump said Puerto Ricans were fortunate that Maria was not a catastrophe on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, which hit the U.S. Gulf Coast. All told, about 1,800 people died in that 2005 storm.
In his 2010 book “Decision Points,” former President George W. Bush reflected on his mistakes during Hurricane Katrina, a human catastrophe that became a political cloud that hung over the rest of his presidency. He wrote that he should have urged the evacuation of New Orleans sooner, visited sooner and shown more empathy. “My biggest substantive mistake was waiting too long to deploy active-duty troops,” he wrote.
(AP)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
17 Responses
Azoy….the Trumpkopf is 100 percent correct. These Puerto Ricans deliberately were niftar to make Trump and his administration look bad. They were voluntary korbanos for the Dems. Outrageous!!!!
What an outrage, democrats didn’t go count, these are independent organizations first of all. Second, so old people, which for sure isn’t all 3000, who died as a result of the aftermath of the hurricane don’t count?! Just reported with video, there are thousands of pallets of undelivered water sitting on an airport runway, enough for 10 bottles for every person in Puerto Rico. Great job donnie.
He also says that he didn’t lose the popular vote.
The dumbest most incompetent person ever to hold the office.
The headline reads:
> Trump Denies 3,000 Died in Puerto Rico Hurricanes
The article actually agrees – the deaths came during the 6 months AFTER the hurricane. Attributing deaths to the aftermath of a hurricane is not the same as deaths “in” a hurricane. Those who died (and are still dying) from such things as breathing the toxins from the WTC attack in 2001 did not die “in” the WTC attack, even when they die “because” of the WTC attack.
DEAR MR TRUMP:
DO YOU MEAN THAT THE DEMOCRATS KILLED THEM ?
WHY DON’T YOU USE ONE OF YOUR STANDART LINES ?
1) BLAME OBAMA
2) FAKE NEWS
Associated Press reporting that FEMA has pre-positioned rolls of paper towels throughout the potential flooding areas in the event the WH wants to do a Puerto Rican style “photo op” where the President will throw out rolls of paper towels to bring comfort and show his empathy to those displaced by the flood and taking refuge in shelters.
“……..Puerto Rico’s governor last month raised the U.S. territory’s official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975 after an independent study found that the number of people who ….. blah, blah,….”
Prove it.
Until then, Trump’s word is as good as yours.
Of course, if any one of the deceptive , lying 17 Intel Services can prove it then I might believe them (hmmm).
When do the TDS sufferers ever take a breath and a drink of water?
I mean it’s one thing after another..
Gossipy books with anonymous sources hammering the prez’s personality and how crazy & dangerous he is, yet his results belie all this sack of hippo manure.
2 categories of people of gobble this stinking bacalao up:
a) Trump haters
b) LI… ( low intelligence )
WATCHIT…!! Russian Colluuuzzyn
GET HILLARY… !!!
read the methodology yourself. They estimated based on a model they invented what deaths should have been, saw what deaths were, and attributed all to the hurricane.
Georgetown Study
“To estimate excess mortality associated with
Hurricane María, it was necessary to develop
counterfactual mortality estimates, or estimates
of what mortality would have been expected to
be had the disaster not occurred. “
Let’s face it hurricanes are fabricated by the democrats just to make the president look bad. And yea, older individuals did die weeks after the hurricane passed so did others who were ill, lacking medicines and who didn’t have power to run life saving medical equipment.
FWIW with power out fuel pumps were not working, making it impossible to provide fuel for vehicles on the island who were slated to deliver supplies. Once again the Jones Act prohibited fuel from being delivered to the island.
> rt
Distribution was the responsibility of Puerto Rico.
And this type of thing is old news. I remember the reports at the time and, a quick peak at snopes, gives a quote (as example) like the following from the President of a local union:
> The one not doing what he needs to do is the governor
Further to my previous post, I looked up the news at the time. To quote on source:
> San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz Soto … a Democrat, held a press conference where she told mainstream news outlets that the Trump administration was to blame for the lack of supplies … while standing in front of pallets stacked with federal relief goods … Guaynabo Mayor Angel Perez Otero said that while other mayors have been joining meetings between, FEMA, U.S. military officials, and Puerto Rican leaders, Cruz Soto has been absent … also said, regarding Cruz Soto’s criticism of the relief effort, “There is a lot of politics in Puerto Rico.”
ZionGate,
They CAN prove it. The independent study has proof from governmental death records.
What proof did the President of the United States give ?
jack,
They CAN”T prove it.
Those studies are flawed, they’re models.
Even the Trump hating WAPO estimates 1,000…. assuming even THAT’S true..
The Harvard study, upon which much of this hyperbole is based, has been debunked..
But who cares? CNN says so, it must be so.
As the Trumpkopf just argued, , these additional 2,928 Puerto Ricans were old and sick and probably would have “died anyway” even without the botched Hurricane relief efforts by FEMA so I shouldn’t be held accountable. More importantly, not a single death or serious injury was attributed to my haphazardly throwing rolls of paper towels into the crowd to show my sympathy to the survivors of the storm. In fact, those in the shelter were thrilled to get their hands on a roll of paper towels thrown out by POTUS. They were able to sell those paper towels on eBay for big dollars which they could then use to buy food and water.
ZionGate, why don’t you describe the model you would have like to have used that includes those who died post Maria. How would you address those with fragile medical conditions that were exacerbated by the hurricanes impact? (ie lack of medicines needed for chronic illness or disease, individuals with fragile medical conditions, individuals needing oxygen, iv infusions and other life saving technologies, those whose original injuries that were not initially life threatening but made fatal due to lack of medical care.)
I would think that your criticism of the model used would also include an alternative. BTW address the Jones Act and how it impacted fuels needed to provide life saving power/fuel for emergency vehicles and services.
ZionGate,
Who cares if people died? Trump says they didn’t. Let’s forget about them and their families.
The people died because of the hurricane and they deserve to be remembered as such.
Now we can feel the disgust of what it’s like to listen to holocaust deniers r’l.
It is as clear as day that the current occupant of the oval office is a sick, grotesque, self obsessed, egotistical psychopath. What an embarresment to our great country.