RUSH: Now we go to the hurricane in Puerto Rico, because the Drive-By Media is doing everything it can to say that Donald Trump is complicit in that one, that Donald Trump didn’t care, that Donald Trump didn’t do enough to help people, that Donald Trump is out lying about the great American response. By the way, ours was the only response. There was no other assistance in Puerto Rico but ours.
Remember we learned that Puerto Rico officials hid hundreds of thousands of bottles of water intended for victims. They were uncovered recently. That was aid that was not distributed. Now they’re running around claiming that Trump is complicit, didn’t care. The latest is that 3,000 people died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. And Donald Trump is saying that is simply not true, 3,000 people didn’t die.
So here from Politico: Donald Trump, without evidence, says 3,000 people did not die in Puerto Rico and, furthermore, that the Democrats are making it up. “President Trump on Thursday accused Democrats, without evidence, of inflating the 3,000-person death count from last year’s hurricanes in Puerto Rico in order ‘to make me look bad.'”
Trump tweeted: “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.”
Where did the 3,000 number come from? Researchers at George Washington University — researchers at George Washington University determined last month that Hurricane Maria alone resulted in 2,975 excess deaths in Puerto Rico. This the media accepts without challenge. The media doesn’t say George Washington University, without evidence, determined last month that Hurricane Maria resulted in 2,975 deaths. But when Trump disputes it, they say Donald Trump, without evidence, says 3,000 people didn’t die.
Do you know that researchers at George Washington University did not go down there and count bodies? George Washington University, their finding was not the result of a death toll accounting. Nobody, researcher or otherwise from George Washington University went to Puerto Rico to count bodies on the ground, in the morgue, or wherever. Instead, you know what they did? They used a public health study that compared mortality in the six months following the storm with the number of deaths that would have been expected if the storm had not hit. They used a computer model!
Researchers at George Washington University reached their conclusion via a computer model, and the way they did it, they did a study that compared death in the six months following the storm with the number of deaths that would have been expected if it had not hit. And they come out magically with a number of 2,975 excess deaths that nobody chronicled, nobody reported, nobody counted, there are no bodies to confirm this.
The media’s effort to prove this was frustrated by several factors. First, experts praised the federal government’s response to Hurricane Maria, at first. “Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló himself praised the federal government’s response: ‘The president and the administration, every time we’ve asked them to execute, they’ve executed quickly,’ he told Fox News in September 2017.”
But Trump’s critics have not given up. They have attempted to cite several new studies, created new estimates of the real death toll. So here you have a computer model estimating this based on that estimate. Nobody has seen any bodies. George Washington University reports it as 3,000 deaths. The media falls right in line and reports it without checking, without confirming, just believing it because it’s a bunch of academics saying so.
Trump says it’s not possible. Only 18 people had died when I left there. That’s why they’re saying excess deaths. Excess deaths are not necessarily related to the storm. They just happened after the storm. Could be related, might not be. It’s just a bogus research study to go along with the fake news that Trump and the U.S. didn’t care about Puerto Rico ’cause they’re people of color because Trump is racist and all that and didn’t do anything to help the island.
They’re just lying through their teeth! They’re making it up as they go! The only thing different is that we have a president who’s pushing back against it when they lie about him. And that’s what they can’t digest. How dare he! How dare he refute what we allege! How dare he! And so he becomes the target. He becomes the one who’s insane.
But how about reporting 3,000 deaths when you don’t have the bodies, when you haven’t even been there to count the bodies, to find the bodies, to look at the graves or whatever! You just use your computer model that is an estimate of previous estimates. “Yeah, this could be, if that happened, but if that didn’t happen, this would have happened. But if neither of those happened, then the third alternative would be this if these two things happened.”
Well, did anybody go there to find out what did happen? No. All we know is that Trump sucks and Trump doesn’t care and Trump didn’t do anything and America didn’t help Puerto Rico and so 3,000 people died. And that is your news story. And that’s why Trump is pushing back against it. If 3,000 people had died, we’d have been hearing about it long before the past few weeks or so.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: That 3,000 death toll in the Puerto Rico hurricane, it was all started by a story from CNN last November. What was going on last November? (laughing) Donald Trump was still in office. Why was the number 3,000 chosen, do you think? It kind of dovetails with the number of people that died on 9/11, doesn’t it? It’s a round number. It’s easily remembered.
People think that’s really bad, you hear about the 9/11 number, 3,000. (impression) “3,000 people, hurricane, wow! “ Did 3,000 people die in New Orleans? Did 3,000 people die in Houston? When did it ever happen? But, it’s fake news. The media just reports it. Half of the media don’t know the truth. They just soak it up like the brain-dead sponges that they are. They regurgitate it and repeat it, and they all end up believing it themselves.