WASHINGTON, DC, USA (AP) — President Donald Trump yesterday 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 US 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 3,000,” 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.”
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 per cent of municipalities lack stable phone or internet service.
Governor 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”.