Donald Trump denies Hurricane Maria death toll in horrifically incorrect Twitter rant

Just when you thought President Donald Trump couldn't drag the country further into the dumpster fire of 2018, he found a way.

As Hurricane Florence buzzsaws through the Atlantic towards the Carolinas, Trump sent out a pair of tweets on Thursday morning that denied the most recently reported death toll from the Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

And, somehow, he played the politics card by blaming Democrats for the count, unbelievably making the deaths of 3,000 Americans a partisan issue.

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Trump, who famously DVRs news programs for later viewing, must have finally caught up with the controversy caused by comments he made on Tuesday in which he said his response to Hurricane Maria was "tremendous."

In August, a George Washington University study put the number of deaths caused by Hurricane Maria at 2,975 people. The government of Puerto Rico accepted these numbers, too, after many months in which the official death toll was listed at 64 people. The storm laid waste to the island, leaving many residents without potable water or power for months.

It's another unconscionable ego play by Trump, who's refusing to acknowledge a (literal) disaster that happened under his watch. It's either an unwillingness to accept the truth or a complete misunderstanding of the reality that many deaths likely came after the storm due to a lack of medical and public services.

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With his comments on Thursday, Trump didn't just kick a hornets nest -- instead, he bludgeoned it with a barbed-wire baseball bat and outrage exploded across Twitter.

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Politicizing tragedy isn't something new, but Trump is taking us to darker place with statements like he's made this week, as his focus seemingly remains squarely on himself and his image.

Meanwhile, yet another monster storm spins towards the East Coast, millions of U.S. citizens are in harm's way, and he's tweeting about two-day old news.

It's not quite like the legend of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, but it's not far off.