Beyond putting out a highly compromised statement undercutting professional Weather Service staff in order to please unhinged Donald "Weather Balloon" Trump (see below), it's now been revealed that on September 1 (5 days before the statement), NOAA specifically ordered its professional staff not to contradict Weather Balloon's errant tweets about Hurricane Dorian:
In an agencywide directive sent Sept. 1 to National Weather Service personnel, hours after Trump asserted, with no evidence, that Alabama “would most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” staff was told to “only stick with official National Hurricane Center forecasts if questions arise from some national level social media posts which hit the news this afternoon.”
They were also told not to “provide any opinion,” according to a copy of the email obtained by The Washington Post.
A NOAA meteorologist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution said the note, understood internally to be referring to Trump, came after the National Weather Service office in Birmingham contradicted Trump by tweeting Alabama would “NOT see any impacts from the hurricane.”
The Birmingham office sent the tweet after receiving a flurry of phone calls from concerned residents following Trump’s message.
The agency sent a similar message warning scientists and meteorologists not to speak out on Sept. 4, after Trump showed a hurricane map from Aug. 29 modified with a hand-drawn, half-circle in black Sharpie around Alabama.As Greg Sargent has noted, this politicization of the federal Civil Service has not been a one- off. But, it's particularly disturbing that this is happening in a science- based organization like NOAA that people depend on for accurate, objective, often life- saving information. It also points to the craven cowardice of the people around Weather Balloon, that they're unwilling and unable to manage even a small, insane outburst like #SharpieGate.
Come November 2020, Americans will have to decide if they want to drain the real swamp of Republican treason, corruption, decay and sycophancy, or whether they want this egregious state of affairs to continue to bring down everything that has been admirable about our country for the past 244 years.
