not only that, anderson, there s one data point that the president wants to call fema a bunch of liars. he cannot deny, fema received in the past month 2,471 applications for funeral assistance. so at least they have to acknowledge 2,471 deaths. now, to add insult to injury, in this unsung success fantasy book that the president is trying to write, fema only approved 75 of those applications for funeral assistance. and the 2,471 that people applied for. he doesn t want to believe the 2,975 from george washington university, and he doesn t want to believe the more than 3,000 from harvard university, he should at least understand that the fact that his own government
government. i wonder if in your conversations with white house or government sources the reassurance goes like this. you know, the president is going to do his thing. he s going to use his twitter feed to urge people to heed the evacuation warnings. in terms of running the government, we ve got this. well, to some extent, yes. in fact, the government did good marks if you want to use that phrase or that kind of standard. in a couple of the hurricanes last year before puerto rico. in fact, the fema agency has, you know, aquitted itself at times with great efficiency. it didn t do as well in puerto rico. the challenges were different. more intense. and it s in moments like that you expect a president to step up and take ownership, take leadership and make things better when they don t seem to be working correctly. that s not been the perception people had of what happened in puerto rico. and it s not the perception because it s not the reality. more than 2,000 puerto ricans applied f
holding the official death toll for maria at just 64, two weeks ago, following a study commissioned by the island s government, puerto rico finally raised the official death toll attributed to the storm to 2,975. that puts it almost exactly at the death toll of americans killed 17 years ago today in the attacks of 9/11. and tonight buzzfeed news reports that of more than 2,000 puerto ricans who applied to fema for funeral assistance for loved ones who died as a result of maria, fema approved just 75 of those more than 2,000 funeral assistance applications. in a letter to senator elizabeth warren, fema director brock long wrote, quote, as of july 30th, his agency had received 2,341 requests for funeral assistance for puerto ricans related to hurricane maria. fema approved just 75 of those requests, meaning 97% were either rejected or haven t
2,975. that puts it almost exactly at the death toll of americans killed 17 years ago today in the attacks of 9/11. and tonight buzzfeed news reports that of more than 2,000 puerto ricans who applied to fema for funeral assistance for loved ones who died as a result of maria, fema approved just 75 of those more than 2,000 funeral assistance applications. in a letter to senator elizabeth warren, fema director brock long wrote, quote, as of july 30th, his agency had received 2,431 requests for funeral assistance for puerto ricans related to hurricane maria. fema approved just 75 of those requests, meaning 97% were either rejected or haven t received a decision yet almost a year after maria hit the island. fema s funeral assistance is intended to help people who lost loved ones in disaster situations, to help them pay for funeral costs including caskets,
needed to be burial, and so they applied for fema burial aid, and 75 of the 4,231 requests for the funeral assistance were approve oed and to get that assistance a death certificate showing that the person died as part of the disaster is needed. how about that, president trump, is that what you call successful. but until last month, the official death count was only 64 people, and this is mr. president, a few dozen more when you said this. every death is a horror. but if you look at a real catastrophe like katrina, and you are looking at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you are looking at what happened here with really a storm that was just totally overpowering, and nobody has seen anything like this, and 16 versus literally thousands of people, and you can be proud. everybody around the table, and everybody watching can be really