Twenty-fifth Amendment

I didn't want to dignify this episode as something even worth noting, but in fact this goes way beyond his usual set of lies.

It started with a false claim by Dear Leader about hurricane Dorian.

In addition to Florida - South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.

The National Weather Service clarified their report in the interest of giving those affected an accurate forecast.

Alabama will NOT see any impacts from Dorian.

When the insane clown was also fact-checked in the news, he shot back:

Such a phony hurricane report by lightweight reporter [Jonathan Karl] of [ABC News]. I suggested yesterday at FEMA that, along with Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, even Alabama could possibly come into play, which WAS true. They made a big deal about this.

Then this chart was displayed at a news conference in the Oval Office.

It turns out that passing off a modified National Weather Service forecast as official is against the law.

After [von Clownstick] displayed the altered forecast Wednesday, a White House reporter asked him about the map, saying "it looked like someone took a Sharpie....," the Washington Post reported.

"I don’t know. I don’t know," [he] reportedly replied, repeating the false claim that Alabama was in the storm’s path.

Update:  Refusing to back down, Fuckface sent out another chart produced four days before his comment about Alabama by which time NWS had already updated the forecast. So why the Sharpie? Why the inability to acknowledge Alabama was no longer probable and that to have claimed otherwise was mistaken?

Update (September 6):  The Washington Post reports Manbaby himself scribbled on the weather map to prove he was right all along. Pia Guerra knows what this leads to.

Update (September 8):  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration actually repudiated their own scientists in this saga, and Republican-appointed former NWS director Elwood Friday gave this response:

This rewriting history to satisfy an ego diminishes NOAA. We don’t want to get the point where science is determined by politics rather than facts.

Also, the Washington Post obtained an email to NOAA staff sent shortly after Dear Leader's initial erroneous statement. They were warned to not contradict that statement and "only stick with official National Hurricane Center forecasts if questions arise from some national level social media posts which hit the news this afternoon". One meteorologist responded:

This is the first time I’ve felt pressure from above to not say what truly is the forecast. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around. One of the things we train on is to dispel inaccurate rumors and ultimately that is what was occurring — ultimately what the Alabama office did is provide a forecast with their tweet, that is what they get paid to do.

Update (September 9):  The New York Times reports that the NOAA repudiation of the NWS came after Wilbur Ross threatened to fire NOAA administrators.

Ross phoned Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, from Greece where the secretary was traveling for meetings and instructed Dr. Jacobs to fix the agency’s perceived contradiction of the president.

Dr. Jacobs objected to the demand and was told that the political staff at NOAA would be fired if the situation was not fixed, according to the three individuals, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode.

Update (September 10):  Paul Krugman notes that one way that democracies die is when "institutions meant to serve the public became tools of the ruling party".

[E]ven the leadership of NOAA, which should be the most technical and apolitical of agencies, is now so subservient to [Fuckface] that it’s willing not just to overrule its own experts but to lie, simply to avoid a bit of presidential embarrassment.

Think about it: If even weather forecasters are expected to be apologists for Dear Leader [sic], the corruption of our institutions is truly complete.

Krugman has a further example about how the Justice Department is being used for intimidation.

Modern de facto dictatorships don’t usually murder their opponents (although [von Clownstick] has been fulsome in his praise for regimes that do, in fact, rely on brute force). What they do, instead, is use their control over the machinery of government to make life difficult for anyone considered disloyal, until effective opposition withers away.

And it’s happening here as we speak. If you aren’t worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention.

Update (September 11):  Though Wilbur Ross and the White House deny involvement with putting pressure on NOAA, the New York Times reports that Mick Mulvaney told Ross to have NOAA publicly disavow the statement from the Birmingham office of the National Weather Service.

Update (September 12):  The New York Times reports that Mulvaney acted on the request of Fuckface himself.

Update (February 2, 2020):  Newly released e-mails about the Dorian map incident includes the following exchange between Makeda Okolo and Benjamin Friedman:

Apparently the President is convinced that Alabama was in the path of Dorian and someone altered a NOAA map (with a sharpie) to convince folks.

Yep, crazy.

Update (July 10, 2020):  A report from Commerce Department Inspector General Peggy Gustafson details the digusting politics involved in protecting Manbaby's delicate ego.

Instead of focusing on NOAA’s successful hurricane forecast, the Department unnecessarily rebuked NWS forecasters for issuing a public safety message about Hurricane Dorian in response to public inquiries — that is, for doing their jobs.