WASHINGTON – More than 130 Democrats from the House and Senate signed a letter to President Trump demanding he apologize to the people of Puerto Rico for refusing to accept the official death toll for Hurricane Maria.
Trump asserted 3,000 people didn’t die and said Democrats were inflating the official death count to make him look bad.
“These comments were grossly inaccurate, callous, embarrassing and beneath the dignity of the Office of the President of the United States,” the lawmakers said in the letter. “We call on you to immediately apologize and set the record straight by publicly acknowledging the official death toll.”
Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-Brooklyn) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) spearheaded the letter, which coincides with the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria making landfall.
Of the 132 lawmakers who signed, all were Democrats – expect for Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats.
Deaths on the island were unreported, so the government of Puerto Rico commissioned an independent study from George Washington University that determined 2,975 people died because of the effects of Hurricane Maria in the six months after the storm.
The government of Puerto Rico accepted the findings.
Trump continued to sow death toll doubts as he headed out to survey the damage of Hurricane Florence Wednesday in the Carolinas. He tweeted late Tuesday that “everybody is saying what a great job we are doing with Hurricane Florence” but at some point “Democrats will start ranting.”
The lawmakers panned Trump’s political conspiracy as “highly offensive.”
“The lost lives of U.S. citizens are no political stunt, and this is not a partisan matter,” they wrote.
Velazquez will join Mayor Bill de Blasio and fellow New York Democratic Reps. Joe Crowley, Grace Meng, Yvette Clarke and Adriano Espaillat Thursday at City Hall to call on the
Trump administration to do more to rebuild Puerto Rico.