Trump says 3,000 people did not die in Puerto Rico hurricanes

Zach Gibson | AFP | Getty Images

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media following a briefing on Hurricane Florence in the Oval Office at the White House September 11, 2018 in Washington, DC.

President Donald Trump on Thursday disputed the most recent official death toll from hurricanes that struck Puerto Rico last fall.

Trump, without providing any evidence, claimed Democrats tried to “make me look bad” by inflating the number of people who died in the wake of the storms “when I was successfully raising Billions of dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico.”

Trump’s two-tweet volley on Puerto Rico came after the president weathered heavy criticism for claiming that his administration’s response to the natural disaster was “an incredible unsung success.”

In August, the Puerto Rican government raised the official death count dramatically to 2,975, after maintaining for months that only 64 people had died.

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