The Trump regime has not formally acknowledged that a combination of the hurricane itself and incompetence -- perhaps even indifference -- led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 Puerto Ricans and that has not changed today even though Trump spent the morning tweeting about it.
Trump more or less called the number fake this morning and he said it's a Democratic conspiracy.
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...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018
.....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. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018
If you're reading this you're probably already aware, but the governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló, commissioned a study to determine the real death toll because the government was incapable of determining it on their own.
Rosselló was pressured by his own constituents, not Democrats, to commission the study because refusing to acknowledge so many deaths has led to logistical and practical problems not to mention that not acknowledging so many deaths is like some form of mass gaslighting. It's like telling people their losses weren't real.
It's just a few short steps from Sandy Hook trutherism to Hurricane Maria trutherism and we know Trump is a big fan of Alex Jones.