Earlier today, Fox News’ Outnumbered panel slammed President Donald Trump for his tweets contesting the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurrican Maria.
Per Mediaite:
Trump, while tweeting on Thursday morning, disputed the estimated death toll of 3,000 — calling it a Democrat plot to disparage him. Fox co-host Melissa Francis blasted the president’s tweets as “distasteful.” She added, “to take upon the issue of how many people are dead is so disgusting.”
“It cheapens us as a country,” Harris Faulkner said.
Steve Hilton, today’s #OneLuckyGuy, agreed that the current political arguments are “unseemly,” though he also said the politicalization of Puerto Rico started when San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz accused the Trump Administration of inaction. Katie Pavlich lamented the current commotion as a “distraction” when the country could learn from the mistakes of Maria to better prepare itself for Hurricane Florence.
Leslie Marshall panned Trump’s attempt to “turn disaster into political victory,” saying hurricane relief is not something to politicize even if it may not factor into the midterm elections.
The 3,000 figure is an estimate based on a comparison of deaths during a normal year in the U.S. territory compared to the deaths recorded in the months following Hurricane Maria.
It possible that only a handful of people died during the storm but many more perished in the weeks that followed as lack of water, electricity, and emergency personnel left the old and sick especially vulnerable.