A few weeks ago, Hurricane Dorian was spinning full speed into the Bahamas and was predicted to inflict a ton of damage to Florida and other parts of the east coast. Remember that? Then the President tweeted out that “…Alabama will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” and many people in Alabama (understandably) freaked out. This was quickly followed by a tweet from the National Weather Service (NWS) in Birmingham, Alabama that said, “Alabama will NOT see any impact form #Dorian.” Then, only to further confuse the public, this was shortly followed by an unsigned press release from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) backing the President’s outlandish claim that Alabama could see an impact from Dorian.
On September 4th, just a few days after this tweet exchange, there was a press conference held in the Oval Office for the President to give an update on Dorian. The little sharpie circle made its debut when the President was attempting to explain an out of date “spaghetti model.” A “spaghetti model” is a map of all the possible ways a hurricane could go that the national weather service makes when it is way too early to determine what path the hurricane will go. This only further confused the public as to why Alabama was in trouble. When a reporter began to ask the president about the sharpie circle, he quickly cut them off saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.” A White House official told the Washington Post that the President was the one to change the map. They said, “No one else writes like that on a map with a black Sharpie.” The sad part is, no one was surprised that the President lied — again.
Well, it’s been a few weeks since that mess, but it is still not over. Multiple investigations have since opened to look into #Sharpiegate. According to the Washington Post, the NOAA’s chief scientist will be looking into why the agency backed the President over its experts. There have been reports that Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, was the one who sent the order to the NOAA to disavow the tweet from the NWS in Birmingham, Alabama. Democrats from all over are calling for the resignation of Secretary Ross. Fox Meteorologist Janice Dean tweeted out “PS: It is a violation of federal law to falsify a National Weather Service forecast and pass it off as official.” She’s talking to you, Mr. President.
So, if you did not already know that we can not trust this administration, I hope this has woken you up. This is not the only thing that the president will be charged with as soon as he is no longer the president. Especially as we are 14 months from the 2020 elections, the president should be looking for as little bad publicity as possible. But maybe he was doing just that? Here are the other things that were happening while every news outlet and late-night talk show was slamming the president on his drawing skills: the administration shuffled millions of dollars from other government projects to the border wall, the UK Parliament is attempting to block their own Prime Minister from exiting the European Union, and the Vice President went out of his way to stay at a Trump-owned hotel while in Ireland. While this could just as easily be a mistake, if it was an intentional ploy by the White House, it was extremely effective.•
