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NOAA staff warned in Sept. 1 directive against contradicting Trump
By Andrew Freedman, Colby Itkowitz and Jason Samenow
September 7 at 8:16 PM
President Trump on Sept. 4 shows a hurricane map from Aug. 29 modified with a hand-drawn, half-circle in black Sharpie around Alabama.
Nearly a week before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publicly backed President Trump over its own scientists, a top NOAA official warned its staff against contradicting the president.
In an agencywide directive sent Sept. 1 to National Weather Service personnel,hoursafter Trump asserted, with no evidence, that Alabama “would most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” staff was told to “only stick with official National Hurricane Center forecasts if questions arise from some national level social media posts which hit the news this afternoon.”
They were also told not to “provide any opinion,” according to a copy of the email obtained by The Washington Post.
That's one way to do it. A tad messy, but guaranteed effective.
Now you've got me wondering how to make a pit bull want to specifically eat one particular part of a dude. Like, do you rub peanut butter on his junk, or...?
WASHINGTON — The Secretary of Commerce threatened to fire top employees at NOAA on Friday after the agency’s Birmingham office contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.
That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disavowing the office’s own position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew criticism from the scientific community that NOAA, a division of the Commerce Department, had been bent to political purposes.
Officials at the White House and the Commerce Department declined to comment on administration involvement in the NOAA statement.
The actions by the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur L. Ross Jr., are the latest developments in a political imbroglio that began more than a week ago, when Dorian was bearing down on the Bahamas and Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that Alabama would be hit “harder than anticipated.” A few minutes later, the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Ala., posted on Twitter that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane Dorian will be felt across Alabama.”
Mr. Trump persisted in saying that Alabama was at risk and a few days later, on Sept. 4, he displayed a NOAA map that appeared to have been altered with a black Sharpie to include Alabama in the area potentially affected by Dorian.
Mr. Ross, the Commerce Secretary, intervened two days later, early last Friday, according to the three people familiar with his actions. Mr. 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.
However, a senior administration official who asked not to be identified when discussing internal deliberations said that the Birmingham office had been wrong and that NOAA had simply done the responsible thing and corrected the record.
That official suggested the Twitter post by the Birmingham forecasters had been motivated by a desire to embarrass the president more than concern for the safety of people in Alabama. The official provided no evidence to support that conclusion.
On Monday, Craig N. McLean, NOAA’s acting chief scientist, sent an email to staff members notifying the agency that he was looking into “potential violations” in the agency’s decision to ultimately back Mr. Trump’s statements rather than those of its own scientists. He called the agency’s action “a danger to public health and safety.”
Dr. Jacobs is scheduled to speak Tuesday at a weather industry conference in Huntsville, Ala.
On Monday, the National Weather Service director, Louis W. Uccellini, got a standing ovation from conference attendees when he praised the work of the Birmingham office and said staff members there had acted “with one thing in mind, public safety” when they contradicted Mr. Trump’s claim that Alabama was at risk.
Are we still talking about how awful it was for the President to warn residents in the possible path of a hurricane to be prepared? Do you sheep need shearing?
Conservatives are going after the New York Times for a now deleted article and tweet calling Mao Zedong a "great revolutionary figure".
I don't understand why this is such a big deal. Haven't we all praised and applauded a tyrannical communist dictator that murdered tens of millions of his own people at one point in our lives?
No?
Oh that's right, that's because we are normal people who don't fetishize socialism, communism and other tyrannical governments.
Future New York Times tweets:
"On this day in 1933, one of history's great German revolutionary figures, Adolf Hitler, came into power as chancellor of Germany"
"On this day in 1953, one of history's most inspirational political leaders, Joseph Stalin, died. Many Americans still support his progressive and revolutionary ideas."
The fact that the New York Times were foolish enough to post the original tweet shows the state of journalism at the publication.
Are we still talking about how awful it was for the President to warn residents in the possible path of a hurricane to be prepared?
I find it amusing that we can now add meteorology to the long list of topics on which Glorious Leader considers himself an expert. C'mon, you can't tell me you saw that one coming. When has any sitting president ever gone on TV with a printout of a weather map which he has asked with a Sharpie?
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