This week marked the 80th
anniversary of the start of the second world war. Commemorations took place in Poland and several
world leaders attended, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French Prime
Minister Edouard Philippe, Belgian Prime Minister and President-elect of the
European Council, Charles Michel, as well as leaders from Croatia, the Czech
Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia, Ukraine and Hungary. Perhaps understandably, given the issues that
he is failing to contend with at home, Boris Johnson did not represent Britain,
appointing in his place, the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab.
Also missing was Donald Trump; who sent Vice President, Mike
Pence as his delegate. Mr Trump recognised
that his domestic priorities should rise to the top of his agenda, in
particular, the meetings with his Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) prior
to the arrival in the US of Hurricane Dorian, which at the time, was making
landfall in the Bahamas where it has caused unprecedented damage and, to date, has
cost the lives of 30 people, with hundreds more still missing.
Such was the importance of the meetings to Trump that he
skipped out of Camp David (twice) for quick rounds of golf at the Trump
National Golf Club, Washington, DC. We
know it was quick because he tweeted as such in an insult
directed at Sadique Kahn (sic)[1], London’s
Mayor, who dared to criticise his failure to focus fully on Dorian. In the same Twitter tirade, he also took the
opportunity to further criticise Barack Obama’s golfing expeditions, saying, “Me,
I run through one of my courses (very inexpensive). President Obama would fly
to Hawaii.”
Really?
According to the website www.trumpgolfcount.com, the sole
purpose of which appears to be the tracking of President Trump’s golf
excursions, he has cost the US tax-payer approximately $109,000,000 for the 213
visits to golf clubs since his incumbency began. In fairness, he may only have played golf on
149 of those occasions, so we shouldn’t be too critical, even Presidents need
exercise, but according to Forbes
magazine, he’s on track to cost the American public over $340 million by
the end of his presidency – always assuming he’s not re-elected. By contrast, in his eight years in office,
Obama played 333 rounds. Trump’s
trajectory is between 600 and 800.
Speaking of trajectories, it appears that Mr Trump might not
have been paying too much attention to the FEMA briefing when he wasn’t
golfing. Twice in separate video
briefings and once on Twitter
he announced that Hurricane Dorian would be hitting Alabama. Geography is clearly not a strong point,
forecasts for the storm’s course show it moving from the Bahamas to the Florida
panhandle, before tracing a course that will take it up the Eastern seaboard
past Georgia and the Carolinas. The
National Weather Service (NWS) quickly tweeted
a retraction.
That was on Sunday, since then Trump has taken not only to
Twitter, to suggest there was substance to his messaging, but also gone to the
extent of a press briefing that shows him holding a map showing the hurricane’s
path. Quite extraordinarily, the map was
doctored with a black Sharpie to circle southern Alabama. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would be
funny. What it demonstrates is that Donald
Trump is utterly unable to admit an error and he would rather spin a web of
falsehoods to disprove his mistake, even if, as some commentators are
suggesting, a Federal offence may have occurred by altering Hurricane Dorian's
path to validate his claim. It
represents an astonishing piece of disinformation from a man who has the
thinnest, thick-skin of any known human.
One wonders how many people in Alabama began making preparations to
evacuate.
Trump’s concern for Hurricane Dorian is rightly placed. It is a category 5 storm, the highest rating on
the Saffir-Simpson scale with sustained winds greater than 157 mph. His press conference on the matter led him to
state that “a Category 5 is something that I don’t know that I’ve ever even
heard the term, other than I know it’s there”. Odd really, it’s the fourth category 5 storm
to hit the United States during his presidency after hurricanes Irma (2017),
Maria (2017) and Michael (2018). The
clever people at Now This
have compiled a much better case for demonstrating his failing memory on the
subject. They’ve also done an excellent
job of demonstrating Trump’s limited use of language when describing
catastrophic events, “This is a tough hurricane, one of the wettest we’ve
ever seen from the standpoint of water” is just one of the pearls he delivered,
there are plenty
more asinine comments that undermine his boasts of a high IQ.
As a further demonstration of his ineptitude, the Axios
website alleges that in a White House briefing on hurricanes, the president
suggested detonating a nuclear bomb in the eye of the storm to arrest its progress. When the naysayers pointed out that dropping a
device, that releases radioactive material, into the world’s most effective
dispersal system, might not be his cleverest suggestion, Trump resorted to his modus
operandi for denial by stating on Twitter that, “The
story [was] … Just more FAKE NEWS!”. I would like to think that, on this occasion,
even he couldn’t be as profoundly stupid as the report suggested and that he
has been the victim of a nasty sleight.
Perhaps if he had a reputation for honesty and integrity, I’d be
prepared to accept his denial.
Reflecting on my opening point, his behaviour displays
enormous contempt for the victims of World War II by fobbing-off his Polish
hosts with excuses that will enable him to play golf, but equally, to the
American people, by being unable to focus on a potential natural disaster that
has caused widespread destruction and heart-breaking loss of life in the
Bahamas.
People’s lives matter.
I don’t begrudge his desire to play a round of golf, but the
timing is wholly inappropriate in the face of such a catastrophe. His ineptitude and disinterest are a danger to
his nation. When Puerto Rico, a US
territory, was hit in 2017 by Maria, one of his ‘forgotten’ hurricanes, Donald
Trump’s response was glacially slow and totally inadequate. One of the most profound images of that time showed
him contemptuously throwing rolls of kitchen paper out to the Puerto Ricans
before him who may have hoped for something a little more useful for managing
the disaster, such as the resources to restore power, water and sanitation,
rather than a roll of ultra absorbant towel.
Congress authorised $20 billion of recovery funds for national disasters,
a fraction of which has been released to Puerto Rico and Trump has now ordered
$3.6 billion of those funds, and others allocated to military projects, to be
diverted to the building of his wall on the Mexican border. Worse still, he has tied the further release
of funds to efforts to reform the government in Puerto Rico and crackdown on
corruption – he doesn’t care for the Puerto Rican people, he’s holding them
hostage.
It is fortunate that the agencies within the United States charged
with managing preparedness and relief take their responsibility more seriously
and exercise more competence, but, as Puerto Rico has demonstrated, they need
resources to be effective. Trump’s lack
of understanding, awareness and his disregard for the well-being of others hampers
their efforts. So too does the
management of his image, which rather than doing anything to restore his
credibility, serves only to highlight that the US people are led by a man who
is so self-centred that he cares not a jot for the country that he wishes to
make great again.
Twitter: @GOMinTraining
Copyright © Craig Brown, 2019
6 September 2019
Copyright © Craig Brown, 2019
6 September 2019
[1]
He later deleted the original tweet and repeated the insults with the correct
spelling of Sadiq Khan, but only once – the second mention of ‘Kahn’ followed a
few lines later.
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