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"HELP!!!" Internal #SharpieGate Emails Show Government Officials Freaked Out...
“HELP!!!” Internal #SharpieGate Emails Show Government Officials Freaked Out Over Trump’s “Doctored” Hurricane Map
“HELP!!!” wrote one federal official. “Yep, crazy,” said another.
Posted on February 1, 2020, at 12:47 p.m. ET
President Trump’s fake hurricane map triggered panic, outrage, and an internal revolt among top officials at the National Weather Service and NOAA. That’s according to a trove of more than 1,000 emails released Friday night to BuzzFeed News and other publications in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Trump (falsely) tweeted on September 1 that several southern states, including Alabama, were “most likely to be hit” by the hurricane after its deadly pass through the Bahamas. Three days later, Trump shared a fake map in which a storm track, seemingly drawn with a black Sharpie, showed Dorian moving toward Alabama. When a National Weather Service forecaster tried to set the record straight, its parent agency, NOAA, released an unsigned statement disavowing the correction — seemingly to appease the White House.
Trump’s fake map and the administration’s insistence on defending it despite evidence to the contrary — dubbed #SharpieGate on Twitter — shows how the administration has prioritized politics over science, even during a fast-moving, life-threatening situation.
Officials and scientists, both inside and outside the government, were horrified, the newly released emails show.
“For an agency founded upon and recognized for determining scientific truths, trusted by the public, and responsible in law to put forward important science information, I find it unconscionable that an anonymous voice inside of NOAA would be found to castigate a dutiful, correct, and loyal NWS Forecaster who spoke the truth,” Craig McLean, then the agency’s assistant administrator, wrote in a September 7 email to other top-level government officials.
“What concerns me most is that this Administration is eroding the public trust in NOAA for an apparent political recovery from an ill timed and imprecise comment from the President.”
“What concerns me most is that this Administration is eroding the public trust in NOAA for an apparent political recovery from an ill timed and imprecise comment from the President.”
more...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/sharpiegate-fake-hurricane-map-emails
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