A former top adviser to President Trump says the president failed to show “empathy” in recent comments made about the response to Hurricane Maria last year in Puerto Rico.
Thomas Bossert, Trump’s former homeland security adviser, on Wednesday told The New York Times that he wished Trump had “paused” and shown empathy to victims of the hurricane instead of just focusing on the federal government’s response.
Maria caused nearly 3,000 deaths on the island and caused billions of dollars in damage, according to updated totals from Puerto Rico’s government.
{mosads}“The missing part was empathy,” Bossert told the Times. “I wish he’d paused and expressed that, instead of just focusing on the response success.”
But Bossert also appeared to defend the president over the rising death toll from the hurricane.
“The people that died — thousands of people — it’s terrible, but it’s always difficult to talk about the causality of that death,” Bossert told the Times, adding that some of the deaths counted by Puerto Rican officials may be “correlative, and not necessarily causal.”
Trump on Thursday blamed Democrats for inflating the death toll numbers, saying they are trying to “make me look as bad as possible” over efforts to rebuild Puerto Rico and provide aid to victims. Power was fully restored to the island for the first time since the storm in August.
“3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. 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 tweeted Thursday.
“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. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!” he added in a second tweet.
Trump’s latest accusation was met with immediate criticism from Democrats, including San Juan’s mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz, who has long been critical of the administration’s response to damage in her city and around the island.
“This is what denial following neglect looks like: Mr Pres in the real world people died on your watch. YOUR LACK OF RESPECT IS APPALLING!” she tweeted.