Donald Trump’s conspiracy theory that Hurricane Maria’s death toll in Puerto Rico is a lie made up by Democrats to make him look bad is, like most of what Trump says, fictional nonsense. It turns out it may be even worse than it looks on the surface, though. (And that was very bad.) Congressional Democrats have released documents, including emails from first responders, from the early days of the hurricane response, showing that the federal government knew this was not a deaths-in-the-low-double-digits scenario, as Trump would have it:
In one email, dated Sept. 29, 2017, a first responder — whose name has been redacted — describes “finding mass graves in mud slide areas,” and requests counseling support for federal first responders in the area. An unnamed Army National Guard general is included in the correspondence. [...]
[Rep. Elijah] Cummings also released an unclassified National Guard intelligence assessment, produced five days after Hurricane Maria hit the U.S. territory, that warns that the “potential for government failure and resulting humanitarian crisis on Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands is high.”
To repeat: a first responder reported “finding mass graves in mud slide areas” and a National Guard intelligence assessment predicted high “potential for government failure and resulting humanitarian crisis.” And near a year later, after a rigorous study set the death toll at 2,975, Donald Trump keeps calling his administration’s response “fantastic” and is outright questioning the death count. Disgusting.
Now, maybe these documents didn’t make their way up the chain to Trump. That’s not an excuse. His administration failed despite having been warned of the potential for disaster, and whether his people didn’t bother either passing the warnings up to Trump or responding competently to the disaster or he personally got the warnings and did nothing, either way, the Trump administration failed Puerto Rico and people died as a result.