Have you fully woken up yet? Have you rubbed your eyes, started your pot of morning coffee, stepped outside to take the air?
Have you forgotten, for a brief and merciful moment, the state of the American republic?
Well, WAKE UP, baby, because Trump just tweeted something awful:
3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018
…..This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2018
It sounds like, from the language used, that Trump believes fewer than 100 people died in Hurricane Maria. The real number, of course, is close to 3,000. That comes from an independent analysis conducted at George Washington University that measures not just immediate deaths, but deaths attributable to the hurricane in the disastrous aftermath. Since that number reflects poorly on Trump, though, he’s chosen not to believe it.
With his tweets Thursday morning, Trump managed the following:
1. He diminished the tragic deaths of everyone who lost a life to Hurricane Maria.
2. He insulted the family and friends of the victims.
3. He contributed to a growing—and highly damaging—conspiracy theory culture in the United States, in which any unpleasant fact can be explained away as fiction, and which both allows and encourages a polarized people to live in alternate realities.
4. He managed to undermine journalism. And science.
The president’s Twitter account has always been a nightmare, but now it seems like he might be heading into uncharted waters. With Alex Jones finally booted off the platform, maybe Trump is stepping into the lunatic void.