Remember the Sharpie?

It is okay if you don’t. There have been 4,315 Trump scandals since hurricane Dorian and you will be forgiven for thinking that all 4,315 of them are more serious than #SharpieGate. But you would be wrong.

Oh, it’s not in the top thirty Trump administration scandals, but it is far more serious than one might believe at first blush. The Commerce Department Inspector General just issued her report and it rips the Trump administration for the political pressure that led to a sh*t for nothing NOAA report that included “Alabama,” one which went unsigned, put out to assuage Trump’s whining. The report ended up eroding trust in NOAA, the Commerce Department, and the federal government itself, making it all look like a political ploy, which is a pretty good description of everything in the Trump administration.

Let’s refamiliarize ourselves with the underlying story:

The imbroglio began Sept. 1, when Trump tweeted that Alabama was at risk from Hurricane Dorian, which was devastating the Bahamas at the time. Trump falsely asserted that the state would “most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by the powerful hurricane.

When Trump sent the tweet, the official Hurricane Center forecast showed the storm skirting the East Coast far away from Alabama. Only one National Hurricane Center forecast product was showing any potential impact in Alabama — a 5 to 20 percent chance of tropical-storm-force winds in a small portion of the state.

In response to calls from panicked residents who saw Trump’s tweet, NOAA’s National Weather Service forecast office in Birmingham, Ala., indicated in a tweet of its own that Alabama was not at serious risk from the Category 5 storm. To calm fears, not knowing Trump had stoked the concern, it tweeted: “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.”

And of course, that infuriated Trump because it showed him up, and it went back and forth until everyone was tired of it.

How could anyone have forgotten? Well, the fact that there’ve been thousands of scandals since then has helped, but no one’s forgotten the #Sharpie. The Commerce Department Inspector General didn’t forget, either, and she was furious that NOAA issued a statement to back up Trump.

That statement backed President Trump’s erroneous claims that Hurricane Dorian would severely impact Alabama and criticized the agency’s own meteorologists.

The inspector general, Peggy Gustafson, an appointee of President Barack Obama, found that the scandal that became known as “Sharpiegate” could have broader repercussions. It comes as the U.S. braces for what is expected to be an unusually active hurricane season, which comes amid a worsening coronavirus pandemic affecting multiple hurricane-prone states, including Florida and Texas. Just after the report was released, Tropical Storm Fay formed off the Mid-Atlantic coast, the earliest sixth named storm on record.

And she is exactly right.

Case in point. We all heard that the federal government might ban Tik Tok. Most of us figured that it was nothing more than lashing out at the app that made such a fool out of Trump. But there was more to it, the DNC also told people to dump it, the Defense Department told everyone to get off it – it seems “real,” Tik Tok may be an information sieve. But that’s what happens when one erodes trust in the federal government, you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t.

Good for NOAA and the Commerce Department. Though, we couldn’t help but notice one thing. This decision came out on a news day that was fully washed out with SCOTUS decisions. The report was also “late.” Are we being cynical in thinking it was held until this late date, knowing it wouldn’t get attention?

We don’t know. Trust in the federal government has eroded so much that …

****

Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom