Natural disasters leave fertile ground for MAGA’s exploitation

It has been an interesting and tiresome week in the news. Time to recap.

Donald Trump made loving phone calls to Vladimir Putin after he left office. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Trump's favorite sycophants in the House of Representatives, believes people have nothing to do with climate change, but also believes the Democrats are secretly steering hurricanes. The Georgia congresswoman is also the same woman who doesn’t believe in science, so I guess she thinks the Democrats possess mad wizard skills.

Vice President Kamala Harris likes Miller High Life beer. Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson like to joke about killing Harris. Musk also showed up in small town Pennsylvania to imitate a cheerleader at a Trump rally.

Members of the GOP who voted to limit FEMA funding now claim FEMA hasn’t done enough in areas ravaged by weather. Meanwhile, other Republicans from the ravaged areas have debunked their colleagues’ misinformation.

Trump wouldn’t sit down for an interview with "60 Minutes." Harris did. Now Trump wants the CBS show investigated for edited promotions of the interview.

Meanwhile, Florida is suffering from a second deadly hurricane while FEMA tries to fend off accusations that the agency doesn’t care about survivors and Gov. Ron DeSantis refuses to answer Vice President Kamala Harris’ phone calls.

The expanding war in the Middle East still isn’t expanding, according to our government – even as Gaza is basically leveled and parts of Beirut are starting to look like Gaza.

The flat earth has a new moon for the next six weeks.

JD Vance continues to cry about being fact-checked while doubling down on his lies while right-wing media political polls show Donald Trump “running away” with the election. Left-wing polls show Harris winning and for some reason, there are still “undecided” voters out there who could make a difference in the election, that’s only a few weeks away.

Never mind that though, Trump has made it clear he won’t accept any election results other than those that put him back in the White House while Harris' critics say she laughs too much.

Did I miss anything?

Talk to most people these days, whether they are inside or outside of politics, and you will hear people bemoan their plight, saying how exhausted they are. The drain on our country from political divisiveness is frustrating even if you’re not directly involved in it. “I’m worn out,” Mary Trump said Tuesday at the beginning of her “Nerd Avengers” show. I understand the sentiment.

On any given day, if you’re inside the bubble, you have to explain to people who should know better the latest efforts of disinformation and misinformation spread by Trump, his obviously unknowing supporters and the vast, militant stupidity that constitutes corporate media.

Trump attacked FEMA's response to Hurricane Helene, complicating efforts to assist those who are now trying to live through Hurricane Milton. Trump lied and claimed Biden didn’t try to contact the governor of Georgia. He lied about a biased response to the hurricane from Democrats. He lied when he said Biden had received “universally” bad reviews for assisting people suffering from Helene.

He also lied when he said Harris diverted FEMA to house migrants. FEMA had to launch a website to explain these falsehoods. FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell had to take time out of disaster preparation to go on CNN and other media outlets to call out the lies Trump spread. That actually takes time and energy away from her primary responsibility – helping people. Criswell said there were more than “3,400 members” of the federal family, which includes FEMA already on the ground assisting people, and that Trump’s lies make people fearful of FEMA. That fear, she said, could “keep them from registering for aid” they could get from the government.

Trump also lied about residents only getting $750 and that a billion dollars has gone “missing” from FEMA.

All of this takes more energy to combat than it took Trump to spread such malicious lies. Ultimately it only hurts those who need the help the most – but like most grifters, Trump doesn’t care.

The real danger for the survivors of the storms begins during cleanup. Years ago, I put together an investigative series for “America’s Most Wanted” following a devastating hurricane in Florida. Trump-like grifters made their way across the state pretending to be in the remodeling and construction business. They took cash down payments from homeowners who had received insurance settlements to rebuild their property. The contractors then vanished. It will happen again and because people fall for Trump’s lies, he’s made the ground fertile for those grifters who follow like parasites in the wake of natural disasters.

But Trump isn’t the only problem.

Veteran Washington journalist Bob Woodward apparently had information about Trump that he sat on until he could write a book. It was information that could be argued is vital for voters to have in their possession. In his latest book, which I refuse to promote and thus won’t name, Woodward claimed Trump secretly sent Putin COVID testing kits during the time when they were scarce in the U.S. He also claimed Trump has had several conversations with Putin since he left office. Trump denies it, and his minions called Woodward demented and deranged. Putin didn’t deny the COVID tests, however, and Woodward withheld it all until it was economically advantageous for him to release it.

These are serious allegations with the implication that Donald Trump is a traitor to the United States. That Woodward would sit on this for any length of time at all says more about his motives, and thus gives Trump the ability to question the information – which he did immediately.

Meanwhile, Vice President Harris continues her curious strategy of not holding press conferences. Trump holds them, but only with friendly reporters. Harris, on the other hand, sat down for an interview with “60 Minutes,” then appeared with Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show.” She laughed, shared a beer with Colbert and spoke casually before calling Trump a loser to a host of cheers. Trump’s people went nuts of course. They really didn’t like the quip that maybe she should have more beer. Trump himself screamed about it, just as he ranted for the need of an investigation after “60 Minutes” edited a comment Harris offered about war in the Middle East. On Truth Social, he claimed it was the worst interview ever and that Harris was edited to look more presidential while she was incoherent and babbling.

Never mind that he constantly babbles, wouldn’t sit down for the interview with “60 Minutes” and lies constantly. Again, we had to spend time cleaning up a mess that Donald Trump created. News magazines always edit interviews. Hell, Trump’s interviews have been edited. You have to edit him just for him to make any sense. And “60 Minutes” still adheres to very high standards, so the comments weren’t edited to benefit Harris. Trump lied again to push back against Harris and the truth of his cowardice. Besides, Trump only knew about the editing because “60 Minutes” made the entire transcript and interview available online. In other words, they published the facts.

But the real annoying part of this week’s pushback from the Trump camp was Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson sitting down on a television set and joking about the foolishness of killing Harris because another “puppet” would simply take her place. Musk owns, arguably, the largest social media platform on the planet, though he’s trying hard to kill it, and those comments add to the fear factor of those who want a kinder, gentler nation. He also showed up at a Trump rally dancing like a cheerleader – a mental image that was enhanced by several memes showing him in a cheerleading skirt while thrusting pom poms in the air.

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All of this disinformation Trump’s inner circle produces is pushed out as misinformation by Trump’s cult and the rabid followers who wish to make bank off of the lunacy. It is a danger as they deny science, deny facts and continue to publish and promote fiction.

“It is well within our power to destroy our civilization and our species as well, if we capitulate to superstition or greed or stupidity,” Carl Sagan once warned us. “We can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilization and the renaissance.” Sagan remained hopeful that “our compassion, our intelligence and our technology and our wealth,” could instead make the world a paradise.

But Paradise is indeed lost on Donald Trump and his cultists. The stark difference between the sum of our fears and the sum of our hopes has never been greater – and that is what is driving the exhaustion in all of society. Imagine being a meteorologist trying to inform the public about Hurricane Milton only to have to deal with death threats from Trump supporters because of the disinformation he is spreading. It happened and it’s mind-numbing.

Whether you are dealing with Trump’s politics firsthand, or only absorbing it like second-hand smoke, passively and sometimes unwittingly, you are suffering.

Sure, it may feel like a bad acid flashback. Your ears are ringing. You’re tired. You’re irritable. You want to sleep and can’t. You want to eat but feel nauseous. You’re seeing tracers. Reality seems warped. You’re always tired. In short, you feel like you’re reliving the worst part of the '60s – even if you weren’t alive when they happened.

Relax. It’s just Donald Trump cultural irritable bowel syndrome. Trump cultural IBS is a real condition brought about by listening to Trump, his minions and those who wish to make money selling his snake oil elixirs at tent revivals across the nation. It leads to clouded thinking and the inability to separate fact from fiction when taken in large quantities. Symptoms of the condition include irritability, making death threats to complete strangers, screaming at relatives, arguing with mirrors, excessive weight gain, poor hygiene and mental confusion. There are several extreme examples of those suffering from Trump cultural IBS who cannot construct complete sentences and confuse science with magic. Throwing punches around and preaching from chairs while engaging in loud flatulence are also known symptoms.

But as Abraham Lincoln, the Bible and the ancient Persians said, “This too shall pass . . .”

Or, if you prefer; “See the bird with a leaf in her mouth. After the flood all the colors came out.”

You don’t need to sing like Bono to know that the final stages of Trump cultural IBS are about to pass and after November’s election we could be staring at a beautiful day. Then again, the whole country could look like Florida in the aftermath of two deadly hurricanes.