WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday rejected the conclusion that nearly 3,000 died in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria, arguing that the number was wrong and that was done by the Democrats to make him look bad.
Last month, Puerto Rico’s governor 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 succumbed in the sweltering aftermath had been severely undercounted.
The estimate of nearly 3,000 dead in the six months after Maria devastated the island in September 2017 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 says the original estimates were so low because doctors on the island had not been trained to properly classify deaths after a natural disaster.
The elderly and impoverished were hardest hit by the hurricane.