President Donald Trump fired back on Thursday at media criticism over the updated hurricane death toll of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
“3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths.”
The updated death count of 2,975 was reached by George Washington University researchers who included indirect deaths six months after the storms hit Puerto Rico.
“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,” Trump wrote.
After Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló was publicly criticized for reporting only 6-18 deaths, he commissioned a new study and accepted the results in February.
Trump accused Democrats of using the study to make his administration look bad.
“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,” he wrote.
Trump suggested that the updated death toll count was unfair.
“If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list,” he wrote. “Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!”