US president Donald Trump has disputed the official death toll from Hurricane Maria last year, and falsely accused Democrats of inflating the Puerto Rican count to make him “look as bad as possible”.
Public health experts have estimated that nearly 3,000 people died because of the effects of Maria. But Mr Trump, whose efforts to help the island territory recover have been persistently criticised, said just six to 18 people had been reported dead when he visited two weeks after the storm.
He also suggested that many had been added later “if a person died for any reason, like old age”.
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
Mr Trump’s comments come as the US east coast braces for another massive storm in Hurricane Florence.
He said of the Puerto Rico death toll: “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.”
Even some Republicans suggested the president had gone too far.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said: “I don’t think it’s bad to say we could have done better in Puerto Rico.”
He also said he thought Mr Trump “sees every attack on him as sort of undercutting his legitimacy”.
Especially upset were Republican politicians in Florida, a state with a substantial Puerto Rican population.
A spokesman for former US representative Ron DeSantis, who won the Florida Republican primary for governor with Mr Trump’s support, said he did not agree with the president’s tweets.
Spokesman Hogan Gidley said: “As the president said, every death from Hurricane Maria is a horror. Before, during, and after the two massive hurricanes, the president directed the entire administration to provide unprecedented support to Puerto Rico.
“President Trump was responding to the liberal media and the San Juan Mayor who sadly, have tried to exploit the devastation by pushing out a constant stream of misinformation and false accusations.”
