CNN political commentator and frequent Trump critic Ana Navarro unloaded on the president’s tweets regarding the death toll in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria last year.
“How stupid, how tone deaf, how surreal, how insensitive, how offensive,” Navarro told CNN. “Just you know, how wrong, in every single way.”
“He’s doing so much harm,” she said.
The president ignited controversy when he tweeted that the approximate 3,000 death toll was inflated by Democrats.
The 3,000 number is an approximation from a George Washington University study that estimated how many “excess deaths” occurred as a consequence of Hurricane Maria, rather than as a result of the normal life cycle on the island.
{mosads}Lynn Goldman, the dean of GW’s Milken Institute School of Public Health stressed that the number is not precise and more work should be done on the issue.
“Among all the deaths that occurred, which of them were related to Maria, which of them would not have occurred if it hadn’t been for the storm? We’re not able to say that now,” Goldman told CNN late last month.
The president has not provided any evidence for his claim that Democrats inflated the number and has been criticized on both the right and the left for it.
Navarro said Thursday that that was because the president’s tweets were politically damaging for those associated with him.
She pointed to Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Sen. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), both staunch Trump supporters who pushed back against the president’s tweets quickly. Scott is running for Senate against Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and DeSantis is running to replace him as governor.
“There are Puerto Ricans who moved to Florida, who could actually make or break statewide elections in Florida in 2018,” she said.
She added, “And I hope all those Puerto Ricans and all those people who know Puerto Ricans in Florida, or who like Puerto Ricans who are mad as Hell at this tweet, remember that the deadline to register to vote in Florida…is October ninth.”