In a shameful display of utter insensitivity, US President Donald Trump has questioned the death toll from Hurricane ‘‘Maria’’ that devastated the US territory of Puerto Rico in September 2017, saying Democrats bloated the numbers to make him look bad.
Trump, in a pair of tweets Friday evening, said the number of people estimated to have died as a result of the 2017 storm in Puerto Rico went up “like magic” to 3,000 and that there was “no way” the death count was actually so high.
In his tweet, Trump said he visited Puerto Rico in October after the storm and was told by officials on the island that 16 people had died.
“Over many months, it went to 64 people,” Trump tweeted. “Then, like magic, 3,000 people killed.”
Public health experts have estimated that nearly 3,000 died from the effects of Hurricane Maria. But Trump, who was roundly criticized for not doing enough to help Puerto Rico last year, insisted the latest estimates of deaths were inflated on purpose.
“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,” Trump tweeted. “If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!”
Trump also questioned the findings of a detailed study by George Washington University commissioned by the Puerto Rico’s government and claimed that its conclusion that 2,975 people died as a result of the hurricane from September 2017 to February 2018 was politically motivated.
Trump’s claims were so outrageous that even his own party disowned them.
“Casualties don’t make a person look bad,” said Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. “I have no reason to dispute these numbers. I was in Puerto Rico after the hurricane. It was devastated.”
Here at home, too, we have seen attempts to politicize disaster management.
We still recall how in 2013, at the height of Super Typhoon “Yolanda,” then-Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II had gone to Tacloban, the hardest hit city, and reminded the mayor there that he belonged to a political clan that was at odds with President Benigno Aquino III.
“You are a Romualdez, and the President is an Aquino,” Roxas famously told Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez—in an ugly display of politics at a time of dire need. While the party in power at the time, the Liberal Party, was playing politics, more than 6,000 people perished as a result of Yolanda.
Thankfully, we have not seen this kind of politics rear its ugly head in the Duterte administration—but we are wary of politicians who use disaster management efforts to stay in the limelight ahead of an election year. They, too, deserve our disdain.
