9/10/19: National Security Adviser John Bolton has been fired. Or resigned.
Trump says he fired Bolton. Bolton says no. He resigned. The Trump White House
can’t even get that detail right.
____________________
“My understanding is that this intervention to contradict the
forecaster was not based on science but on external factors including
reputation and appearance, or simply put, political.”
Craig McLean, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration
____________________
And on a similar note, the Trump administration can’t get the
story of the Hurricane that Almost Hit Alabama right, either.
That story about a weather event, unimportant in itself, encapsulates
much of what makes Trump unfit to lead this great nation. Nobody will
remember this tale ten years from now, save the scientists involved. Alabama
was not hit. Alabamians will not look back in a decade and remember the day
Trump said they should head for cover because the storm was a killer, plowing their
way.
This story is the story of who Trump is. It begins with a
harmless mistake, one any of us could make. Trump tweets dozens of times about
Hurricane Dorian. That’s fine. In one, possibly a mix-up, he says Alabama will
be hit hard. The Birmingham office of the National Weather Service finds itself
swamped with frightened callers inquiring what they should do. A correction is
issued.
Alabama is NOT under threat.
When news services pick up on Trump’s mistake, he’s too petty
to admit an ordinary error. First, he tries to lie his way out of a predicament
that should have been no predicament at all. Just admit a simple mistake and
the story is over. He can’t do it. And that leads to the famous Sharpie Weather
Map (see: 9/5/19), which only opened the president up to well-deserved
ridicule.
That caused Trump to explode. Orders went out to federal
agencies. Come to his defense. Make it sound as if the president was right all
along.
If not, heads would roll.
The agency
“must, maintain standards of scientific integrity.”
Three sources tell The New York Times that Secretary
of Commerce Wilbur Ross, whose department includes the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration – which includes the
National Weather Service – leaped into action. Back up the
president’s claim, Wilbur warned, or firings at the National Weather Service
would result. An unsigned statement was issued, saying Trump was right all
along.
The scientists were not amused. Alabama had never been under threat. Peggy E.
Gustafson, inspector general for the National Weather Service, wrote in a
message to staff that the agency “must, maintain standards of scientific
integrity.” The order to support the president’s mistake, she wrote, calls
“into question the NWS’s processes, scientific independence, and ability to
communicate accurate and timely weather warnings and data to the nation in
times of national emergency.”
Gustafson wasn’t the only scientist to smell a skunk. As Time
noted,
Director Louis Uccellini said
forecasters in Birmingham did the right thing Sept. 1 when they tried to combat
public panic and rumors that Dorian posed a threat to Alabama. It was only
later that they found out the source of the mistaken information, he said.
Speaking at a meeting of the National Weather Association, Uccellini said
Birmingham forecasters “did what any office would do to protect the public.”
“They did that with one thing in
mind: public safety,” said Uccellini, who prompted a standing ovation from
hundreds of forecasters by asking members of the Birmingham weather staff to
stand. Earlier, the president of the 2,100-member association, Paul Schlatter,
said any forecast office “would have done the exact same thing” as the
Birmingham forecast office.
Kevin Laws, Science and Operations Officer for the weather
service in Birmingham, was asked if he’d like to add further comment. “I think
the speech speaks for itself,” he told reporters.
Craig McLean, acting chief scientist at NOAA, also made clear
what he thought of a misguided effort to back Trump. “My understanding,” he
wrote in a memo to staff, “is that this intervention to contradict the
forecaster was not based on science but on external factors including
reputation and appearance, or simply put, political.”
McLean was scathing in his letter. First, he insisted that
the Birmingham staff “corrected any public misunderstanding [due to the
president’s tweets] in an expert and timely way as they should.”
Second, he noted that the NOAA Scientific Integrity Policy
tells all agency employees to “approach all scientific activities with honesty,
objectively, and completely, without allegiance to individuals, organizations,
or ideology [emphasis added].”
Finally, he warned that the NOAA press release backing Trump
up, “compromises the ability of NOAA to convey life-saving information” and
“violated NOAA’s policies of scientific integrity.” That policy states that
individuals higher up the chain of command should not “intimidate or coerce
employees, contractors, recipients of financial assistance awards, or others to
alter or censor scientific findings.”
So, there you had it: On one side, a petty, dictatorially-inclined
President Trump, backed by his toadies.
On the other side you had truth and science – and plenty of witnesses to prove Trump and his aides lied.
*
“You’re
basically stuck looking after a 4-year-old now.”
THIS BRINGS US, finally, to a story posted recently by the Business Insider, which clearly relates.
That story highlighted the dangers posed by an increasingly
unbalanced, erratic, enraged President Trump.
“No one knows what to expect
from him anymore,” one former White House official [told Business Insider].
“His mood changes from one minute to the next based on some headline or tweet,
and the next thing you know his entire schedule gets tossed out the window
because he’s losing his s---.
“People are used to the president
saying things that aren’t true, but this Alabama stuff is another story. This
was the president sending out patently false information about a
national-emergency situation as it was unfolding.”
The story continues, with sources asking for anonymity,
because they fear retribution from Trump.
“He’s deteriorating in plain
sight,” one Republican strategist who’s in frequent contact with the White
House told Insider on Friday.
Asked why the president was
obsessed with Alabama instead of the states that would actually be affected by
the storm, the strategist said, “you should ask a psychiatrist about that; I’m
not sure I’m qualified to comment.”
Nor was this behavior entirely new.
More than that, one person who
was close to Trump’s legal team during the Russia investigation told Insider
his public statements were “nothing compared to what he’s like behind closed
doors.”
“He’s like a bull seeing red,”
this person added. “There’s just no getting through to him, and you can kiss
your plans for the day goodbye because you’re basically stuck looking after a
4-year-old now.”
At this point, some White House aide should take away all of
Trump’s Sharpies before he pokes himself in the eye.
*
THE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE announces results of a study on longevity begun in 1992.
As Spock used to say: “Prosper, and live long.” Of all the
richest Americans, in their 50s and 60s, alive in 1992, 75% were still alive in
2014. For those in the poorest fifth, only 52% were still above turf.
In another sign that something is not right in America today,
the GAO study showed that “the poorest 40 percent of women actually have lower
life expectancies than their mothers did.”
Finally, we learn that the GOP plan to kill Obamacare and
make America great again, is working. The percentage of Americans with no
insurance at all increased last year from 7.9% of the population to 8.5%.
That means two million more people can’t afford to go to the emergency room if need
be.
