You can believe Donald Trump or you can believe the rotting corpses.

Late last month, Pentagon communications officials inadvertently included Bloomberg climate reporter Christopher Flavelle on an internal distribution list, in which Defense Department and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials discussed their evolving strategy for presenting the response to Hurricane Maria.

Despite repeatedly alerting officials to the error, Bloomberg continued receiving the emails for five days. Those messages, each of which was marked “unclassified,” offer a glimpse into the federal government’s struggle to convince the public that the response effort was going well. That struggle was compounded by the commander-in-chief, and eased only when public attention was pulled to a very different disaster.

Below are passages from those messages, tied to the events that federal officials were trying to respond to.

Sept. 28: Eight days after Maria hit, coverage of the federal government’s response is getting more negative.

The Government Message: Pentagon officials tell staff to emphasize “coverage of life-saving/life-sustaining operations” and for spokespeople to avoid language about awaiting instructions from FEMA, “as that goes against the teamwork top-line message.”

Sept. 29: San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz criticizes Washington’s spin, calling Puerto Rico a “people-are-dying story.” 

The Government Message: FEMA talking points ignore Cruz, instructing its officials to say that “the federal government’s full attention is on Hurricane Maria response.”

Sept. 30: Trump attacks the mayor’s “poor leadership ability.”

The Pentagon worries that Trump’s “dialogue” with Cruz is becoming the story, with “many criticizing his lack of empathy.”
The Government Message: FEMA stresses its success in reaching “all municipalities in Puerto Rico.”

Oct. 1: Trump calls critics of the response “politically motivated ingrates.”

The Government Message: Defense staff admit that “the perception of USG response continues to be negative.” Spokespeople are told to say, “I am very proud of our DOD forces,” before conceding “there are some challenges to work through.”

Oct. 2: The massacre in Las Vegas dominates the headlines.

The Government Message: The shooting “has drawn mainstream TV attention away from Puerto Rico response,” FEMA says. Still, the roundup seems to have lost some of its previous optimism. It concludes, simply: “Negative tonality.”

Death tolls are one of the main ways the public understands the impact of a disaster. And as my colleague Alexia Fernandez Campbell and I reported earlier this week, the official death count from Puerto Rico of 45 is very much at odds with other reports from the situation on the ground.

On October 3, President Donald Trump used the low death toll — which was then 16 — as an opportunity to play down the severity of the disaster when he visited the island. And on Thursday, a Republican lawmaker used the low death toll to again claim the situation in Puerto Rico is no longer life-threatening.

“If half the country didn’t have food or water, those people would be dying, and they’re not,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said on CNN’s New Day, as first reported by the Hill.

[...]

The New York Times on Thursday described Puerto Ricans desperately hunting for bottled water in the capital of San Juan. The Environmental Protection Agency has said that some have been resorting to drinking water from contaminated Superfund sites. And the Guardian cited FEMA officials who said that they had a shortfall of nearly 2 million meals a day to meet the food needs on the island.

Counting the dead in the wake of a disaster the scale of Hurricane Maria is no doubt extremely challenging. But Vox’s analysis suggests that the government is being very cautious in designating deaths as directly or indirectly hurricane-related, and painting a less severe picture, compared to the public information available. And so the American public — and some policymakers like Perry — may perceive the situation on the ground as less serious than it is.

On Thursday, a day after Vox published its findings, two members of Congress announcedthey were requesting an audit of the Puerto Rico death toll, citing our report. “It would be morally reprehensible to intentionally underreport the true death toll to portray relief efforts as more successful than they are,” wrote Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS). “If, on the contrary, this information has benignly been muddled due to a lack of capacity on the island, then the federal government must work hand-in-hand with Puerto Rico's government to provide a clearer assessment.”