Donald Trump is obviously "fact" challenged

Echo opinion published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch by Editorial Board

Last summer, Trump mistakenly warned that Hurricane Dorian threatened the Alabama coast. Days later, rather than admit error, he displayed a government weather map clumsily altered with a Sharpie marker, as if to confirm his erroneous claim. 

In a postscript, a federal watchdog last week chided the administration for threatening government scientists who had the audacity to contradict Trump with facts.

“Sharpiegate” today looks like an early harbinger of what would later go so wrong with America’s pandemic response: Now, as then, this Trump ignores science and puts his personal interests above the good of the nation. Worse, people around him — people who clearly know better — (ugh!) enable this dangerous behavior.

On Sept. 1, Trump tweeted a warning that Dorian would hit Alabama “harder than anticipated.” In fact, the storm wasn’t on track to hit Alabama at all (!); Trump’s warning was based on outdated information. Honest mistake. About 10 minutes later, the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, fielding panicked calls from the public, tweeted that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.”

That’s where it should have ended. But according to a new government watchdog report, top federal officials had to divert their attention from the approaching hurricane to focus instead on soothing a bruised presidential ego — to the point of threatening the weather officials.

It “appears as if the National Weather Service intentionally contradicted the president,” then-White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said in an email to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the watchdog report states. “And we need to know why. [Trump] wants either a correction or an explanation or both.”

The obvious response should have been, Well, the president was mistaken. But Trump, bizarrely, cannot admit making even the smallest error, ever. So weather officials were warned that “there are jobs on the line,” according to the report.

Ultimately, the administration issued a statement that the weather office shouldn’t have said Alabama was safe. Even though it was.
The report, by Commerce Department Inspector General Peggy Gustafson, concluded the administration “unnecessarily rebuked NWS forecasters for issuing a public safety message about Hurricane Dorian in response to public inquiries — that is, for doing their jobs.” She warned it could undercut public confidence in weather experts during future storms, potentially endangering the public.

As Trump has demonstrated repeatedly during the pandemic, he couldn’t care less about endangering the public. Just as he’d rather undermine trust in weather experts than admit a small error, he’d rather let the coronavirus engulf America than admit his response to the crisis has failed and needs to change.

This isn’t just a matter of outsized ego. As indicated by Sharpiegate — and as confirmed by Trump’s pandemic misinformation, his dangerous reopening demands and his maskless rallies — there is something psychologically wrong with this president. But what is the excuse of the Mulvaneys and Rosses of this administration?

Donald Trump is a dangerously failed leader - echo opinion

This opinion letter from Oklahoma was published in Tulsa World:

Letter to the Editor: Trump’s Alabama Sharpie map erodes trust with Americans- he is dangerous.

#Sharpiegate Trump

On Sept. 1, 2019, Donald Trump tweeted a warning that Alabama would be among the areas “most likely” to be hit by Hurricane Dorian. About 20 minutes later, the National Weather Service in Birmingham tweeted: "Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian." (Hurricane Dorian)

On Sept. 4, Donald Trump gave a (stupiud!) news conference with a map obviously altered with a Sharpie to show that the extended Dorian’s projected cone went into the southeastern corner of Alabama.

This hand-drawn addition indicated the storm would move from Florida into Alabama and made it appear Trump’s Sunday tweet was correct, despite national weather officials and updated forecasts saying otherwise.


There are lives that can be lost if a president does not consider and rely on experts in making decisions and pronouncements.

Everyone makes errors, especially Donald Trump. But, further compounding an error with an obvious misstatement leads one to question whether that president should continue making the momentous decisions needed for the job.

In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy announced we were blockading Cuba because nuclear ballistic missiles were being installed there by Russia. Americans believed Kennedy and stood by him.

If Trump were to make a similar announcement that had grave implications on the continuance of life in America, would you believe him and stand by him? If not, that - in and of itself - is a serious (and dangerous!) problem.

John L. Harlan, Tulsa, Oklahoma

BUT! As if #sharpiegate were not "bad enough"!....now this: North Carolina stupidity

Echo! Published in The Denver Post, I read this opinion after the stupid #Sharpiegate incident was plastered all over the world's media. Donald Trump violated the tenets for supporting the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast that predicted hurricane Dorian's path, while the devastating storm skipped up the US east coast. 

He warned people living in Alabama about the storm, but (!) it was never predicted to affect that state. So, the #sharpiegate fiasco happened after this opinion essay was published, and before Trump's deliberately stupid and illegal weather blunder.

Blake echo: Donald Trump’s transparent and petty pre-hurricane politicking

He said whaaaa?  "Thank you, Mr. President"?  Senator Thom Tillis, R-NC #SIASD (Thank you for what? For being stupid!)

DENVER POST- On the list of Donald Trump’s political sins, wrongly crediting a GOP ally for getting him to declare a pre-hurricane Dorian federal emergency in North Carolina doesn’t rank particularly high.

But!

This is a remarkably transparent political gambit even for Trump, to whom so little is holy, coming as it does on the eve of a natural disaster that has threatened the southeastern United States and devastated the Bahamas.

On Tuesday night September 3, Trump credited Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., for his decision to declare a federal emergency in the state ahead of Hurricane Dorian’s arrival. “At the request of Senator Thom Tillis, I am getting the North Carolina Emergency Declaration completed and signed tonight,” Trump tweeted. “Hope you won’t need it!”

The first problem with that is that senators don’t formally request states of emergency. Under federal law, that’s left to governors.

In North Carolina’s case, that governor is Roy Cooper, a Democrat. Cooper declared a state emergency Friday and formally requested the federal one Monday. Trump didn’t mention him in the tweet.

The second problem is that it’s clear that this was political payback, and there’s virtually nothing subtle about it. Tillis, as Wagner notes, is up for reelection in 2020, and he faces a difficult general-election contest and a well-funded primary foe, businessman Garland Tucker. He appears to have earned plenty of goodwill from Trump after his flip-flop on Trump’s border-wall national emergency, which he eventually supported after writing a Washington Post commentary against it.

And Tillis was clearly angling for some credit here, repeatedly tweeting about his talks with Trump about the federal emergency.

“Just got off the phone with President @realDonaldTrump,” Tillis tweeted Monday evening, saying Trump would be issuing the federal emergency. “Just spoke with President @realDonaldTrump again & he said an emergency declaration for NC would be made later tonight,” he tweeted Tuesday. When Trump tweeted his credit to Tillis, the senator retweeted it without correcting Trump or mentioning Cooper’s role.

“Thank you, Mr. President!” he said.

Fine. Tillis can certainly play a role in that process, too — even if he doesn’t formally make the request. 

And there’s nothing wrong with letting people you work for know you’re engaged and talking to the president.

But !

Even if we set aside all of that: Was Trump really not going to declare a federal emergency in one of two states that are most directly in Dorian’s path, along with South Carolina? 

That state had already gotten one, as had Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which appear to have escaped the worst effects of the hurricane. As you can see from this long list of hurricane-related federal emergency declarations, this is a matter of course. Many recent declarations were for storms whose names you’ve probably already forgotten.

Whether someone is politicizing a natural disaster is difficult to pin down; one person’s politicization is another’s raising of an important issue. Republicans accuse Democrats of politicizing hurricanes by citing climate change, for example, when Democrats and climate scientists think that’s pretty important.

Orange man Trumpzi stupidity!

But! Even accounting for that subjectivity, Trump’s pre-hurricane gambits have been pretty obvious.

There was the time he pardoned Joe Arpaio, a former sheriff in Arizona, as Hurricane Harvey was hitting Texas — and acknowledged that he did so with the hurricane in mind. “A lot of people think it was the right thing to do,” Trump said. “Actually, in the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they were normally.”There was the time he lodged a conspiracy theory that Democrats had inflated the Hurricane Maria death toll in Puerto Rico . . . less than 24 hours before Hurricane Florence was set to hit the Carolinas. (Even Florida Republicans disowned that Trump theory.)

Just last week, Trump called Puerto Rico corrupt and wrongly inflated the amount of Maria-related aid the U.S. territory received, even as it faced another blow from Dorian.

And before he was president, Trump previewed Hurricane Sandy in 2012 by arguing that President Barack Obama would use it to his advantage for his reelection bid.

“Hurricane is good luck for Obama again- he will buy the election by handing out billions of dollars,” Trump tweeted.

Trump even used the occasion to extend the deadline for his offer of $5 million for Obama’s birth certificate.

“Because of the hurricane, I am extending my 5 million dollar offer for President Obama’s favorite charity until 12PM on Thursday,” Trump said.  (Cruel, OMG!)

It has become pretty clear what’s on Trump’s mind when a hurricane is about to hit.

Aaron Blake is senior political reporter, writing for The Fix. A Minnesota native, he has also written about politics for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Hill newspaper.