Trump says official Puerto Rico hurricane death toll of 3,000 was made up by Democrats 'to make me look bad'

Donald Trump has claimed that nearly 3,000 people did not die in Puerto Rico due to the impact of Hurricane Maria, despite the island’s government putting the official death toll at up to 2,975. The president wrote on Twitter that Democrats inflated the death toll to make him “look as bad as possible” in the wake of criticism over his handling of the response to the disaster. The official toll had been given as 64, before the release of findings from researchers from George Washington University that lifted the total dramatically in a study commissioned by the US commonwealth’s government.