Days after Donald Trump said his administration's response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico was “fantastic” and “one of the best jobs that’s ever been done,” he’s back to defend his administration’s actions in Puerto Rico by saying that the death toll there is a Democratic conspiracy.
Why did the death count rise so much after the fact? Kelly Macias explains:
This latest report by George Washington University notes that many physicians were unaware of how to certify deaths after a natural disaster, and that the island’s government did not effectively communicate how to do death certificate reporting prior to last year’s hurricane season. As a result, only deaths that were directly attributable to effects of the storm, such as flooding, flying debris, etc., were counted. This process failed to take into account how other deaths might have occurred—for example, a lack of electricity causing the failure of a ventilator in a hospital, fatal car accidents due to mudslides and road debris, and the like.
So in part, what Trump thinks exonerates him really shows how responsible he is for many of the deaths in Puerto Rico. Because many of the deaths were due to inadequate, incompetent response to the hurricane. Due to things like the ongoing lack of electricity, lack of water, inadequate shelter—things that the federal government should have been taking care of but wasn’t. “If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list,” he writes. But the point is that many more people died—after having survived the initial winds and rain—in the months following the hurricane than in the same months of other recent years. That’s not just some coincidence.
Donald Trump and his administration neglected Puerto Rico and now he’s denying the killer effects of that neglect.