September 12-13, 2018: Hurricane Florence Bears Down on Carolina Coast - Trump Bitching About Puerto Rico Death Count

 

9/12-13/18: With Hurricane Florence bearing down on the Carolina coast, the president decides this would be the perfect time to start bitching about how everyone is out to get him. And, no, he says, not that many people died when Puerto Rico was pummeled by hurricanes in 2017. 

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Trump decides to make a story about death and destruction all about him.

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Plus, you figure Trump doesn’t care how many Puerto Ricans died, anyway. They’re not rich white folks. 

Nor do they vote in presidential elections. 

Incredibly, Trump decides to make a story about death and destruction all about him. People were killed in the storm? Thousands saw homes and property destroyed? Parts of the island were without electricity for over a year? Well, he, Donald J. Trump, is the real victim. 

Why is Trump sad? He’s not getting the credit he deserves for his “unsung success” in dealing with the damage in Puerto Rico. How much credit does he believe he deserves? He has already given himself an “A+” for his work in handling the hurricane disasters that hit Texas and Florida. He expects everyone else to give him “A+” grades too. Is there anything higher? 

If so, he deserves it.

A normal human being would focus on the devastation in Puerto Rico. 

Trump makes the focus himself.

 

Originally, the death toll in Puerto Rico was thought to be only 16 or 17, remarkable in view of catastrophic structural damage that resulted when a Cat 4 hurricane hit, followed by a Cat 5, not long afterward. Trump bragged about the low death toll compared to the loss of life from Katrina in 2005. 

Puerto Ricans slowly put their lives back together – and the federal government did help. The death toll rose to 64. 

With conditions returning to normal, a team of researchers from George Washington University went to work. They spent six months poring over death certificates and comparing mortality rates, before and after the storm. They talked to eyewitnesses. They talked to doctors. They talked to funeral home directors. They consulted with hospital administrators. The real death toll from the paired storms, researchers estimated was not 16 or 17, or 64, but 2,975. 

Each death was a human tragedy; but Trump cared only about one storm victim. Himself. If the toll were higher, he couldn’t brag about the A+ job he had done. “SAD!” as he might put it in a tweet. 

So, tweet he did: 

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...

 

.....This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible [emphasis added] when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico! 

 

This was classic Trump. First, he was wrong in his facts. The report wasn’t put together by Democrats, but by researchers from George Washington University. Second, they adjusted the death toll, accounting for age and all kinds of factors. Third, no one was “blaming” Trump. Most of the deaths would have occurred no matter who was sitting in the Oval Office. (But the president had opened himself up for criticism when he bragged about the low death toll last year.) Fourth, he sounded like an asshole – which, in fact, he is. He only cared about himself, how much praise he could reap. He didn’t care about the 16 or 17 who died, or the 64, or the 3,000. 

He didn’t care about anyone save himself. 

In the face of withering criticism for his soulless comments, Trump decided to double down. He re-tweeted a link to Lou Dobbs, so that all his fans could listen to Lou howl. How dare researchers estimate that nearly 3,000 Puerto Ricans died! The numbers are “inflated,” Dobbs bellowed. It’s the “media” again, out to get the president – by quoting researchers! Why not use a report issued by Harvard, which, in Dobbs’ mind undercuts the findings in the GWU report! According to Dobbs, the Harvard study put the estimated death toll between 800 and 8,000. That means, in Nut-Job World, that the estimate of 3,000 in the GWU study can’t possibly be correct. 

So, the real toll must be closer to 16 or 17 or 64, the highest number Dobbs is willing to cite. 

Here, then, we have another neat right-wing math trick, since Dobbs has just used a Harvard study to “undercut” the George Washington study, but the lowest estimate by Harvard is 800 dead. 

And the highest is way worse…