Trump stance on Puerto Rico death toll draws criticism on Capitol Hill
- by Muriel Colon
- in Global Media
- — Sep 17, 2018
President Trump took a four-day golf vacation in its immediate aftermath. "This method was never done with previous hurricanes because other jurisdictions know how many people were killed".
"Success? Federal response according to Trump in Puerto Rico a success?" Curbelo said he sees no basis for that claim. Elizabeth Warren of MA that there were 2,431 applications for funeral assistance from Puerto Rico as of July 30.
"They hired GWU Research to tell them how many people had died in Puerto Rico (how would they not know this?)", Trump wrote.
Mr Trump's tweets came as Hurricane Florence approaches the Carolina coast and is expected to cause risky flooding and tornadoes.
During a news conference on Capitol Hill later Thursday morning, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., avoided directly criticizing Trump but said he had no reason to dispute the study's findings.
Trump took to Twitter this week to warn residents in the path of Hurricane Florence to follow the advice of local officials and to be prepared.
As for the nearly $50 billion in federal funds already approved by Congress for Puerto Rico's rebuilding, Cruz said most of it had not been disbursed by the federal government.
"The victims and the people of Puerto Rico should not have their pain questioned", he said during an interview on MSNBC. "It is time to acknowledge their pain and the sacrifice that everyone has made in the name of recovery".
And the the federal government's relief effort was riddled with demonstrable failures: Despite receiving advance warning of the hurricane's likely landfall in Puerto Rico, the administration neglected to deploy satellite phones, generators, and reserves of food, fuel, and water in advance of the storm.
83-Foot Wave Recorded By Satellite Monitoring Hurricane Florence
N.H.C. said at 5:00 p.m. that the center of Tropical Storm Isaac was located near latitude 14.9 North, longitude 63.2 West. Isaac is forecast to gradually weaken over the next few days, and could degenerate into a tropical wave during that time.
Florida agencies, utilities poised to provide Hurricane Florence aid
In Washington, North Carolina, the wind-swept Pamlico River has risen beyond its banks and is flooding entire neighborhoods. At least 1.7 million people in the Carolinas and Virginia have been warned to evacuate, and others are hunkering down.
South Africa's murder rate up nearly 7 per cent, police say
The station which recorded the second-highest number of murders in the country was Umlazi in KwaZulu-Natal with 223 cases. Gauteng recorded 108 child murders, the Free State 52, North West 49, Mpumalanga 46, Limpopo 31, and Northern Cape 19.
Trump tweeted Wednesday, "We got A Pluses for our recent hurricane work in Texas and Florida (and did an unappreciated great job in Puerto Rico, even though an inaccessible island with very poor electricity and a totally incompetent Mayor of San Juan)".
Cruz tweeted Thursday, "Simply put: delusional, paranoid, and unhinged from any sense of reality".
Again, Mr Trump framed it as an attempt by his political opponents to shame him.
Democratic politicians were especially harsh in the denunciation of Trump's tweets.
The feud between Cruz and Trump goes back to when the Category 4 storm hit last September 20.
Trump supporter David Urban tried to defend the president, saying that the president should have said that the government did their best and they intend to do better in the future.
In this week's fact-checking video, CNN's Jake Tapper dissects the president's false tweets about the death toll in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat who is being challenged by Scott in November, called Trump's comments "shameful". "As time went by it did not go up by much", he says, with zero evidence.
Trump on Thursday questioned an independent report that updated the death toll from last year's devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico to almost 3,000 people.
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