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White House defends Trump on Puerto Rico death toll claim
WASHINGTON — As Hurricane Florence bore down on the U.S., President Donald Trump angrily churned up the devastating storm of a year earlier, disputing the official death count from Hurricane Maria and falsely accusing Democrats of inflating the Puerto Rican toll to make him “look as bad as possible.”
Public health experts have estimated that nearly 3,000 perished because of the effects of Maria. But Trump, whose efforts to help the island territory recover have been persistently criticized, was having none of that Thursday. He said just six to 18 people had been reported dead when he visited two weeks after the storm and suggested that many had been added later “if a person died for any reason, like old age.”
Trump’s jarring comments, coming as the East Coast braced for the massive storm, which later made landfall early Friday in North Carolina, offered fresh evidence of his resistance to criticism and his insistence on viewing large and small events through the prism of his own success or failure.
Offering up a fresh conspiracy theory, he said of the Puerto Rico count, “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.”
Even some Republicans suggested the president had gone too far.
“Casualties don’t make a person look bad,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said, breaking with the president. “So I have no reason to dispute those numbers.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who talks to Trump often, said, “I don’t think it’s bad to say we could have done better in Puerto Rico.” He also said he thought Trump “sees every attack on him as sort of undercutting his legitimacy.”
Especially upset were GOP politicians in Florida, a state with a substantial Puerto Rican population.
Gov. Rick Scott, who is running for the U.S. Senate, tweeted: “I’ve been to Puerto Rico 7 times & saw devastation firsthand. The loss of any life is tragic.” A spokesman for former U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, who won the Florida GOP primary for governor with Trump’s support, said he did not agree with Trump’s tweets.
The White House defended the president.
“As the President said, every death from Hurricane Maria is a horror. Before, during, and after the two massive hurricanes, the President directed the entire Administration to provide unprecedented support to Puerto Rico,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said. “President Trump was responding to the liberal media and the San Juan Mayor who sadly, have tried to exploit the devastation by pushing out a constant stream of misinformation and false accusations.”
Gidley cited studies that attributed fewer than 3,000 deaths on the island to Maria.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has struggled to publicly express empathy at times of national crises, sparking outrage during his post-Maria visit when he feuded with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz and tossed out paper towels to victims like he was shooting baskets. In recent days, Trump publicly lauded his own administration’s response to Maria and privately groused over storm-related news coverage that he saw as overly focused on Puerto Rico, according to two Republican advisers close to the White House who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Puerto Rico’s governor last month raised Maria’s official death toll from 64 to 2,975 after an independent study found that the number of people who succumbed in the sweltering aftermath had been severely undercounted. Trump dismissed the findings Thursday, tweeting: “If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list.”
In fact, there are two categories of disaster deaths. “Direct” deaths include such fatalities as drownings in a storm surge or being crushed in a wind-toppled building. “Indirect” deaths are harder to count because they can include such things as heart attacks, electrocutions from downed power lines and failure to receive dialysis because the power is out — and those kinds of fatalities can happen after a storm has ended but while an area is struggling to restore electricity, clean water and other health and safety services.
When Trump visited in October 2017, two weeks after the storm hit, the death toll at the time was indeed 16 people. The number was later raised to 64, but the government then commissioned an independent study to determine how many died because of post-storm conditions. That study — conducted by the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University — estimated 2,975 deaths.
Dr. Carlos Santos-Burgoa — the lead researcher on the study and a well-known expert in global health, particularly Latin America — told The Associated Press that the initial figure of 64 deaths reflected only people whose death certificates cited the storm. He said the latest figure was more accurate and stressed that every death in the six months following the storm was not attributed to the hurricane.
“We are scientists. We are public health people. We are committed to the health of the population. We try to reach the truth, and we try to understand what is damaging the people in order to prevent disease,” he said.
Puerto Rico’s government is run by the New Progressive party, a pro-statehood, Puerto Rico-only party. Gov. Ricardo Rossello told CBS New York on Thursday that he was a Democrat but stressed that the government sought the study and said it “tried to make this process a completely independent process.”
State and local officials are responsible for establishing death tolls, not the federal government. After the total was revised Aug. 28, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement in which she did not actively dispute the revised figure.
Trump’s fresh anger drew swift rebukes from elected officials and residents of the island, where blackouts remain common, 60,000 homes still have makeshift roofs and 13
Cruz, the Democratic San Juan mayor who has sparred with the president, tweeted: “Trump is so vain he thinks this is about him. NO IT IS NOT.” Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who spent part of his youth in Puerto Rico, spoke on the House floor in front of a printout of the Puerto Rican flag, saying Trump is “delusional” and incapable of “empathy or basic human decency.”
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to the GOP majority Thursday calling for the panel to request documents from the White House relating to the Puerto Rico response.
Trump maintained as recently as Tuesday that his response to the storm was an “incredible unsung success.”
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Associated Press reporters Colleen Long, Lauran Neergaard and Alan Fram in Washington, Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Michael Weissenstein in Havana, Cuba, and Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this report.
Catherine Lucey, Zeke Miller And Jonathan Lemire, The Associated Press
Human trafficking suspect arrested in Red Deer, July 2024
From Alert, the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team
Three human traffickers arrested in Project Endgame
Three men have been arrested and stand accused of running a human trafficking operation that stretched across Canada; operating throughout Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Quebec.
Project Endgame was a year-long investigation led by ALERT’s Human Trafficking unit, and also relied on the assistance of the Edmonton Police Service, RCMP, and the Quebec joint forces Anti-Pimping team known as EILP.
Arrests and search warrants had taken place in Edmonton, Montreal, and Red Deer. A total of 23 charges related to human trafficking offences have been laid against Clyde Elien-Abbot, 31, Kevin Dorcelus-Cetoute, 31, and Jean Rodnil Dubois, 31. Elien-Abbot was arrested on January 31, 2025 in Edmonton, while the other two accused were arrested on July 23, 2024.
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From LifeSiteNews
The Liberals are choosing a new face, but all six contenders seem likely to continue forcing Canadians down the same path as the PM they’re out to replace
With the Liberal leadership election just over a month away on March 9, Canadians are examining the six final contenders and questioning if they will bring change to the Liberal Party or carry on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s radical legacy.
The six contenders for Liberal leader and consequently, the next prime minister, are: Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland, Karina Gould, Jaime Battiste, Frank Baylis and Ruby Dhalla.
While all the above candidates are promising to turn the Liberal Party around, their policies, both past and proposed, suggest little difference from the radical, anti-life and globalist agenda embraced by the Trudeau government.
Former Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney
Carney appears to be the frontrunner for Liberal Party leader, with many mainstream outlets tacitly promoting him as a solution for Canadians, and numerous MPs having endorsed his campaign.
However, as LifeSiteNews has previously reported, Carney’s history suggests he would be an even more radical version of Trudeau.
While his impressive work experience certainly raises him in the estimation of Canadians, especially compared with Trudeau’s pre-political career as a drama teacher, the former Governor of the Bank of England, like Trudeau, openly supports abortion, the LGBT agenda and many of the tax and fiscal policies of the Trudeau government, such as the carbon tax.
Carney’s endorsement of energy regulations go even further than Trudeau’s, with the candidate having previously blasted the prime minister for exempting home heating oil from the carbon tax.
Carney has also been a longtime supporter of the globalist World Economic Forum, attending their infamous annual conference in Davos, Switzerland as recently as January 2023.
Carney routinely uses social media to advocate for achieving so-called “net-zero” energy goals, and even had his team bar multiple independent journalists from attending the press conference he held to announce his bid for Liberal leader.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland
Freeland’s bid for Liberal leader came as a surprise to many as it closely followed her resignation from Trudeau’s cabinet.
Freeland is perhaps best known internationally for her heavy-handed response to anti-mandate Freedom Convoy protesters, which saw the then-finance minister direct financial institutions to freeze the bank accounts of Canadians who participated in or donated to the protest.
Freeland, like Carney, also has extensive ties to the WEF, with her receiving a personal commendation from former WEF leader Klaus Schwab.
Interestingly, at the same time as Freeland announced her Liberal bid, the WEF’s profile on Freeland was taken down from their website. Additionally, the majority of Freeland’s Instagram posts have been removed from public view.
Many have speculated online as to the reason why these actions were taken, with some suggesting that Freeland desires to distance herself from the massively criticized group.
Critics often pointed to Freeland’s association with the group during her tenure as finance minister and deputy prime minister, as she was known for pushing policies endorsed by the globalist organization, such as the carbon tax and online censorship.
Former House Leader MP Karina Gould
Gould, an avid abortion activist, is perhaps best known for telling American women that they can have their abortions in Canada following the Supreme Court of the United States’ overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Gould is also known for continually advocating in favor of state-funded media, which critics have warned causes supposedly unbiased news outlets into de facto propaganda arms for the state.
In one example from September, Gould directed mainstream media reporters to “scrutinize” Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who has repeatedly accused government-funded media as being an arm of the Liberals.
Gould also claimed that Poilievre’s promise to defund outlets like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would deny Canadians access to important information, ignoring the fact that the Liberals’ own legislation, which she voted for, blocked all access to news content on Facebook and Instagram.
MP Jaime Battiste
Voting records show that in 2021 Battiste opposed a bill aiming to protect unborn children from sex-selective abortions. Later that same month, he voted to pass Bill C-6, which allows parents to be jailed for up to five years for refusing to deny the biological sex of their gender-confused children.
Furthermore, Battiste struck down a motion to condemn incidents of arson and vandalism of churches across Canada. In October 2023, a Conservative MP put forward a motion to denounce the arson and vandalism of 83 Canadian churches, especially those within Indigenous communities.
However, Battiste moved to adjourn the meeting rather than discuss the motion, saying, “I would like to call to adjourn debate on this if that’s what we can do, so we can hear the rest of the study, but if we have to, then I would rather discuss it in camera because it does have a way of triggering a lot of people who went through residential schools and the things they are going through.”
The Liberal government is known to be extremely lenient in their rhetoric when it comes to attacks on Catholic churches, with Trudeau even saying such behavior was “understandable” even if it is “unacceptable and wrong.”
Former MP Frank Baylis
Baylis served as a Liberal MP in 2015 but chose not to seek re-election in 2019. Now, he has thrown his hat in the ring as Liberal leader.
During his time as MP, Baylis was a staunch supporter of abortion. In 2016, he voted against a Conservative bill to provide protection to unborn children and pregnant mothers from violence.
Interestingly, Baylis is the former owner of the Baylis Medical Company of Montréal which was awarded a $282.5 million government contract for now “useless” ventilators during the COVID “pandemic.”
Former MP Ruby Dhalla
Dhalla served in the House of Commons from 2004 to 2011. Interestingly, Dhalla, born to Indian immigrant parents, has promised to deport illegal immigrants and “clamp down on human traffickers.” Dhalla’s stance sets her apart from the other Liberal candidates on the issue.
While Dhalla styles herself as an “outsider,” during her time as an MP, she worked to further abortion in Canada, voting against legislation to protect babies from violence in the womb.
In conclusion
It seems that no matter who is selected as the next leader of the Liberals, the party will remain one which prides itself on being pro-abortion, pro-LGBT, pro-euthanasia and globalist in vision.
While Trudeau may be taking the blame for the current state of the Liberal Party, with these 6 candidates it would appear that the party remains intent on pushing the same policies.
Although it is true that Trudeau’s political blunders, such as his repeated historical use of black-face or his inviting a Nazi-aligned World War II veteran into Parliament, have contributed to his popularity decline, it seems the policies behind the blunders are not his, but the Liberal Party’s itself.
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