Watch: Trump Appears Not to Understand How Hurricanes Work

In just three days, Hurricane Helene gas killed at least 119 people as it trailed its way along the Southeast, making it one of the deadliest storms in modern U.S. history.

The real scope of devastation is difficult to define before such an unprecedented hurricane hits land, but it’s not impossible to predict a storm’s scale, timing, and general path. Somehow, that information isn’t obvious to Donald Trump, who, after surveying some of the storm’s devastation in Georgia, told reporters Monday that “nobody” could have forecast Helene.

“That’s a big one. And the devastation wrought by this storm is incredible,” Trump said during a presser in Valdosta, Georgia. “It’s so extensive, nobody thought this would be happening, especially now it’s so late in the season for the hurricanes.”

It is, of course, not late in the season for hurricanes: September tends to be the most active month in the calendar year for the superstorms.

But Trump’s own policy proposals are likely to keep him—and every other American—from obtaining such life-saving weather forecasts and emergency weather alerts in the future. Trump has touted elements of Project 2025 , a 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto that proposes completely demolishing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose responsibilities as a federal agency include tracking the weather and predicting hurricanes.

“The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” the far-right proposal reads on page 664.

That would effectively privatize weather forecasts, forcing U.S. citizens to pay for weather subscriptions that would include crucial national weather alert systems for emergencies such as flash flooding, extreme heat, earthquakes, or otherwise.

Trump has spent months trying to distance his campaign from Project 2025 , but a flurry of the Republican presidential nominee’s recent comments, which include supporting demolishing the Department of Education , have practically glued himself to its policy points.