As North Carolina braces for the potentially devastating impact of Hurricane Florence, President Trump is facing a firestorm of his own in response to his appraisal of hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico. On September 12, President Trump tweeted that his administration, “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.” When confronted with the results of a report, which approximated that from September 2017 to February 2018, 2,975 people in Puerto Rico died as a result of Hurricane Maria, President Trump rebuked the evidence. On September 13, President Trump tweeted, “3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico…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.”However, this denial of facts has much larger implications than drawing the ire of both the president’s opponents and supporters.
The study that President Trump rebuked was commissioned by the Governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rossello, in response to concerns that the initial government-counted death toll of 64 was likely inaccurate. The report states this initial estimate was low “primarily because the conventions used for causal attribution only allowed for classification of deaths attributable directly to the storm, e.g., those caused by structural collapse, flying debris, floods and drownings.” Therefore, when presented with this evidence, the Puerto Rican government raised the official death toll to reflect the report’s findings. This report was an attempt to establish government accountability in the wake of the hurricane and President Trump repressed it.
“Once we realized [the initial death tallying method] was a faulty protocol, we called upon the Milken Institute at George Washington [University] so they could revise it and do it properly and do it scientifically,” Governor Rossello said.
Although other studies have provided somewhat differing estimates of the number of people that died in the aftermath of the hurricane, the approximately 3,000-person death toll that the president has attacked was surmised from records that were provided by the Puerto Rico Department of Health. The post-hurricane death tolls have somewhat differed because each study employed varying scientific methodologies. Whereas the New England Journal of Medicine randomly surveyed over 3,000 households in Puerto Rico, the study from the Milken Institute compared mortality rates from previous years with those following Hurricane Maria.
“This study, commissioned by the Government of Puerto Rico, was carried out with complete independence and freedom from any kind of interference,” the Milken Institute wrote in a statement in response to President Trump’s denials. “We are confident that the number – 2,975 – is the most accurate and unbiased estimate of excess mortality to date.”
Although a recurring theme throughout his campaign and presidency, President Trump’s willingness to undermine or outright deny factual reporting has been particularly evident over the past two weeks. Following the publication of the anonymous op-ed by a senior White House official, the president accused The New York Times of fabricating the story. Shortly afterwards, the president referred to journalist Bob Woodward as an “idiot” and his recently released book, a “work of fiction.”
However, President Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the objective scientific validity of the study sends a dangerous message to the Puerto Rican government: efforts at transparency will be ridiculed, not rewarded. Governor Rossello admitted that he made mistakes and the report he commissioned provides recommendations regarding how to remedy those errors. In the wake of Hurricane Maria, allegations of corruption on the island have been rampant. If the Trump administration wants to encourage long-term recovery in Puerto Rico, then it must be encouraging actions that increase governmental transparency and accountability.