Emails show the fallout from Trump’s claims about Dorian
WASHINGTON — A flurry of newly released emails from scientists and top officials at the federal agency responsible for weather forecasting clearly illustrates the consternation and outright alarm caused by President Donald Trump’s false claim that Hurricane Dorian could hit Alabama.
A top National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official even called the president’s behavior “crazy.”
What the scientists and officials found even more troubling was a statement later issued by an unnamed NOAA spokesman that supported Trump’s claim and repudiated the agency’s own forecasters.
The emails, released late Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from The Associated Press and others, give an inside picture of the scramble to respond to the president and the turmoil it caused inside the federal agency.
“What’s next? Climate science is a hoax?” Craig McLean, NOAA’s acting chief scientist, wrote in an email sent to the agency’s top officials. “Flabbergasted to leave our forecasters hanging in the political wind.”
In a more formal letter, McLean wrote that what concerned him most was that the Trump administration “is eroding the public trust in NOAA for an apparent political recovery from an ill timed and imprecise comment from the President.”
As Dorian headed for the southeastern U.S. in early September, Trump tweeted that Alabama was “most likely to be hit (much) harder than anticipated.” The National Weather Service in Birmingham corrected him, tweeting that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.”
But Trump remained adamant, and NOAA came to his defense with the unsigned statement, which claimed some data provided to the president had indicated that Alabama could be hit by the hurricane and scolded the Birmingham office. The statement was issued after the White House and Commerce Department intervened, the AP and others reported at the time.
It provoked angry emails from within the agency and from the public.
Gary Shigenaka, a NOAA scientist, wrote to the agency’s acting administrator, Neil Jacobs, asking him to “reassure those of us who serve the public ... that we are not mere pawns in an absurd game.”
In response, Jacobs defended the forecasters and said, “You have no idea how hard I’m fighting to keep politics out of science.”
NORTH LIBERTY, Iowa — Democratic presidential candidates promised voters in Iowa on Saturday they would unify the party to take on President Donald Trump even as they kept up their criticism of each other and navigated the lingering divides from the 2016 campaign.
“I’m confident Americans, Republican voters, Democratic voters and independent voters want us to come together,” former Vice President Joe Biden said in North Liberty. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to make progress in the areas that matter most.”
About 20 miles away in Cedar Rapids, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren updated her stump speech to include a more explicit call for unity.
“We’re down to the final strokes here,” she said. “But we understand that, we will and we must come together as a party to beat Donald Trump and I’ve got a plan for that.”
And Bernie Sanders insisted he would back the ultimate Democratic nominee even if it’s not him.
“Let me say this so there’s no misunderstanding,” the Vermont senator said in Indianola. “If we do not win, we will support the winner and I know that every other candidate will do the same.”
On the eve of Monday’s Iowa caucuses, the unity pledges marked an early — and urgent — effort to avoid the divides that some Democrats say helped Trump win the presidency in 2016. After a year of campaigning, most polls show a tight race between Biden, Warren, Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Those candidates, along with Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and businessman Andrew Yang, crisscrossed Iowa on Saturday seeking a breakout victory that would propel them deeper into the contests that will decide the Democratic nomination.
Most surveys show the top four candidates jumbled at the top. And on Saturday, the final Des Moines Register poll — traditionally seen as the gold standard survey of the caucus electorate — was pulled from publication after questions about its methodology. The newspaper said Buttigieg may have been left off the list presented to a caucus-goer in at least one call.
To break out of the pack, the candidates have focused on a wide variety of policy issues ranging from free college tuition to the role of government in health care, criminal justice reform, gun control and solutions to climate change. But the biggest issue on the minds of many voters is landing on a candidate who can beat Trump.
Anxiety over the party’s ability to unify grew over the past two weeks after Hillary Clinton, Sanders’ 2016 primary rival, twice criticized the senator for not doing enough to bring Democrats together after their bruising battle.
The divide was on display Friday when Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., appeared at a Sanders event in Iowa and booed at the mention of Clinton. She later issued a statement saying she “allowed my disappointment with Secretary Clinton’s latest comments about Senator Sanders and his supporters get the best of me” and would “strive to come from a place of love and not react in the same way of those who are against what we are building in this country.”
Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager, retweeted her statement and said: “We love your passion and conviction. Don’t change.”
Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill called that comment “unbelievable.”
“It’s not enough that she booed her party’s last nominee, but they’re making sure it’s clear she doesn’t have to regret it,” Merrill tweeted.