House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday he doesn’t doubt the latest death toll figures from the impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico, but stressed the storm caused the tragedy, not President Trump.
“I have no reason to dispute those numbers,” Ryan, R-Wis., said, when asked about Trump’s tweet casting doubt on the latest death toll.
In a pair of tweets Thursday morning, Trump lashed out at a new study that claimed 3,000 people died as a result of the hurricane, which struck Puerto Rico in late September of 2017 and caused catastrophic damage. Following the release of that study, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello formally raised the death toll late last month.
Trump said the numbers were inflated by Democrats “in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico.”
[Related: Twitter rips Trump for claiming Puerto Rico death toll was inflated, devised by Democrats]
Trump added, “If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!”
Ryan attributed the death toll to the storm and the isolation of Puerto Rico, an island 1,150 miles southeast of Florida.
“Those are just the facts of when a horrible hurricane hits an isolated place like an island,” Ryan said. He added, “That’s really no one’s fault. That’s just what happened.”
