Just how much more can Florida voters stomach from Donald Trump in this election?
“Do the hurricanes always spin this direction?”
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse. To put things in perspective a little for those that are not familiar with hurricanes and Palm Beach County — it’s a way of life for us, we go through the routine every year around this time of year in fact. Being born in mid-Sept I’ve spent a few birthdays “hunkering down”. While not all of us are climate scientists, you can’t help but pick-up a few of the basic details like the meaning of storm surge, wind speed, and the way the thing spins. Its happening in slow motion and you get a real sense of how the dynamics work because you watch on TV and make the connection to what is happening around you. As the feeder bands develop over the waters, you look outside and things are a little calmer, the winds gusting less often, then the feeder band turn counter-clockwise and start coming in from the ocean in a south-west direction towards the shore and you can anticipate when it’s going to hit your neighborhood. Once the feeder band hits you can connect what’s happening on the radar with the increase rain, wind and the gusts start picking up and you start to see flooding and wind damage around you. Understanding this dynamics sinks in because its happening so slowly over the several hours that you actually plan around it, maybe do your boarding up and last minute errands between feeder bands. This isn’t some obscure fact you learn in a college undergrad course — you can’t help but learn it you would have to have a serious mental deficiency to not notice this.
A reminder — Mar-a-Lago is in Palm Beach. Trump is voting this year from his Palm Beach address. Maybe it just so happens that for every hurricane he always stayed away and went to New York or something but even that is hard to believe because most storms aren’t that serious and majority of the time we just ride them out, especially the ones that likely will miss and turn to the north anyways. I really cannot fathom how this guy could have not picked up this extremely obvious fact. The only explanation that I see that is plausible is that this detail just dropped off from his memory by the time he’s in the White House — and that appears to be what has happened. I can’t give him the excuse that he was drunk because I believe the reports that he abstains from alcohol, at least since he entered the White House. I have been slowly moving through phases developing an understanding of this man that made it to the White House. In 2016 when I heard he was the candidate I thought it was a joke, I thought yea OK sure whatever. Then after he won I thought — OK this is interesting let’s see how he shakes things up. I wasn’t really paying attention either to the Russian scandal, etc.. So only these past few month’s I’ve been catching up on what I have missed and the more I learn, the more horrified I am. The next stage I realize he really has bad policies (immigration, climate change) but I was pretty resistant to outlandish sinister theories, etc.. But then I learn more, impeachment, etc.. and I become alarmed that he is behaving like an authoritarian willing to do anything to stay in power like Venezuela’s Maduro or Putin, etc.. But then the coronavirus hit, and the George Floyd protest and the guy commits political suicide by trying to make false predictions about the spread of the virus and sending a militarized response to protests and holds a bible like he’s the Shah of Iran in 1979. I want to write him a letter — —
you idiot, you’re not even doing the authoritarian dictator thing right
So after that I’m moving towards he’s really just an insecure idiot who’s gotten in waaay over his head, and now I’m not really afraid of him so much as I pity the guy. He needs to be locked up on 21 Jan but not sent to your run-of-the-mill prison like the immigration detention facilities he is famous for. No this guy is a piece of work, he needs to be sent to an institution where he can get some professional therapy. This is just another piece of evidence to confirm that nobody should listen to anything this guy says. He doesn’t meet the basic litmus test to hold any position of authority. He can stay in the White House from now until Jan 20th someone needs to make sure he gets three square meals a day, a pillow, send him to the golf course, shut down his twitter account, cancel any appointments with the media. Just hand over all external communications to Ivanka from now until then. As long as he has a platform he’s going to continue to cannabalize himself politically from his own stupidity.
This year’s election decision really has nothing to do with policy or political identities. I hope that for anyone hearing what I’m saying I really mean it. I have some conservative positions that I disagree with the left on and I would love to have those debates but this guy is getting in the way of having those conversations. I really can’t ignore this level of incompetence. It’s like Nixon’s watergate — you really gotta hold up the “time-out” hand signal and recognize this isn’t about ideology or policies. The issue this election boils down to a basic question of cognitive and empathetic capabilities. You are forgiven if you voted for him in 2016 but if you vote for him in 2020 knowing what you know now? It’s not a coincidence that his “base” at this point is concentrated with non college educated whites. Continue to associate yourself with him at the expense of your own reputation and your own sense of dignity.
The full quote from Miles Taylor — ex White House staff working in the Department of Homeland Security
“At first I thought he was focused. He was paying attention to the briefing. He was studying the foam board that had the picture of the storm track. Then he turned to me and said
‘I have a question — do the hurricanes always spin that direction?’
He meant counter-clockwise, that’s called the Coriolis effect. It’s the same thing that explains why the water in the toilet bowl spins the opposite direction in Australia — a follow-up question he had — this is what the President was focused on.
Americans were in the path of a deadly hurricane. He needed to get out and tell them to evacuate and he was just marvelled at the way hurricanes spin — the way that a third grader might learn about earth science.”
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2020/08/18/lead-taylor-live-jake-tapper.cnn