What really makes me angry is that while the Bahamas took a direct hit from the Category 5 storm, totally devastating the island nation, and then stalled off Florida, wreaking havoc before moving up the East Coast, eventually losing strength, the idiot in the Oval Office proceeded to remind the public just how stupid he really is, continuing his daily tweets about how right he was on his interpretation of an old, long-forgotten hurricane advisory.
So every day, Trump took center stage with his inane blather. Starting last Sunday, September 1, Trump tweeted: “In addition to Florida – South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated. Looking like one of the largest hurricanes ever. Already category 5.”
Above is the NHC may showing the cone of Hurricane Dorian’s projected path. The National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama quickly replied to Trump’s tweet with a tweet of their own: “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east.”
Also on Sunday, September 1, NOAA spokesman Christopher Vaccaro verified that “The current forecast path of Dorian does not include Alabama.” You can see very clearly the NHC image that was used to remind folks to view a new update on Dorian on August 29.
Well, I guess Trump took it upon himself or had one of his stooges get in touch with NOAA because, on Friday, the unsigned statement from NOAA appeared in the news feed.
The President of the United States used a Sharpie pen to edit the projected path of Hurricane Dorian to make it seem like the original predictions included the state of Alabama. If he goes through these ridiculous lengths to cover up his dumb mistakes, imagine what else he does. pic.twitter.com/2q8pXX03dr
— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) September 4, 2019
Backlash from everywhere
From Al Rocker, one of my long-time favorite weathermen to any number of former NOAA officials, the backlash over the NOAA statement has continued to escalate. Former NOAA Chief Operating Officer David Titley blasted the NOAA statement, saying it represented “perhaps the darkest day ever for @noaa leadership.”
Monica Medina, who worked as NOAA’s general counsel, tweeted Friday, “As a former @NOAA leader I can say two things with certainty. No NOAA Administrator I worked for would have done this. And I would have quit if I had been directed to agree to let this BS go out.”
If this is correct a #Trump inauguration committee member fucked @NOAA bigly. September 7, 2019
Dan Sobien, head of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, which represents thousands of workers under NOAA, said federal workers were “shocked, stunned and irate” with NOAA siding with Trump. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Sobien said: “Never ever before has their management thrown [employees] under the bus like this.”
“The tweet from NWS Birmingham was spot on and accurate,” Birmingham-based meteorologist James Spann Jr. tweeted. “If they are coming after them, they might as well come after me. How in the world has it come to this?”
Trying his tiny hand at cartography #trump #maps #HurricaineDorian pic.twitter.com/xzlsaz0txo
— Cartoons from iffland ✍️ (@edmundiffland) September 6, 2019
I always have a bottom line. Besides very nicely undermining the credibility of one of the nation’s top science agency’s – putting every single weather advisory into question – and creating even more dissension amongst the population with his mindless and inane tweets, Trump is doing something even more dangerous.
The chosen one – his words, not mine – is slowly but surely tightening his grasp on every federal agency and as many public organizations that he can, molding them into his own idea of what his government should be. That is not the government of and for the people this country started out to be, and this is not good.
