Hurricanes Place Meteorologists on the Growing List of Republican Threats
Now with two of the worst hurricanes ever to touch down leaving millions bereft, a new group of professionals is the target of right-wing intimidation - meteorologists.
Tell the truth, contend with threats.
That seems to be the message pervading American discourse today.
Politicians, election workers, school board members and educators, and librarians have been recipients of death threats over the past several years for telling the truth about anything the extreme ideological right seeks to deny.
Now with two of the worst hurricanes ever to touch down leaving millions bereft, a new group of professionals is the target of right-wing intimidation — meteorologists.
On Friday, Meteorologist James Spann explained to Axios he started noting threats and conspiracy theories around the time Hurricance Helene was ramping up.
These threats included demands for meteorologists like himself to “stop lying about the government controlling the weather — or else,” and “Stop the breathing of those that made them and their affiliates.”
The latter threat was directed at meteorologist Katie Nickolaou, prompting her to respond, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes. I can’t believe I just had to type that.”
South Florida meteorologist John Morales--who broke down on air when reporting Hurricane Milton’s predicted magnitude — explained he has been accused of being a “climate militant,” adding, “It is the worst I’ve ever seen, no doubt.”
James Spann said this level of climate denial is the worst he has ever seen as well, admitting, “Clearly, something has changed. We’ve not had this level of insanity in the past.”
In addition to “the government controlling the weather,” another disturbing conspiracy theory plaguing those dedicated to helping us weather storms are, “President Joe Biden in a pre-hurricane message to citizens says, ‘get vaccinated now,’” conflating the COVID-19 pandemic with hurricanes, playing on another conspiracy theory that President Biden has lost grip on reality. This is a conflation of a statement Biden made three years ago, urging residents in hurricane-prone areas to get vaccinated before inclement weather hindered the ability to do so. (Honestly, this is still not a bad idea today as the new booster has hit pharmacies.)
Another claim is that Vice President Kamala Harris had not tweeted about Hurricane Helene when she had, in fact, tweeted about it the day before the lie started circulating.
The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) even dedicated a page on its website to debunking the most prevalent rumors, such as:
— FEMA controls or manages transfer stations, dump sites and contracts related to storm debris.
— FEMA will only provide $750 to disaster survivors to support their recovery.
— FEMA is blockading people in Florida and preventing evacuations.
— FEMA only provides loans to disaster survivors.
— FEMA distributes aid based on demographic characteristics.
Washington D.C.-based meteorologist Matthew Cappucci lamented:
People are just so far gone, it’s honestly making me lose all faith in humanity. There’s so much bad information floating around out there that the good information has become obscured. Seemingly overnight, ideas that once would have been ridiculed as very fringe, outlandish viewpoints are suddenly becoming mainstream and it’s making my job much more difficult.
He added:
For me to post a hurricane forecast and for people to accuse me of creating the hurricane by working for some secret Illuminati entity is disappointing and distressing, and it’s resulting in a decrease in public trust.
To whom can we attribute this latest round of disturbing rhetoric?
MAGA-loyal republicans, of course. Who else?
Not surprisingly, they’re taking cues from the convicted felon running for his old job, who has trotted out such lies as President Biden has “refused calls from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp”; an anti-republican bias is hampering recovery efforts in North Carolina; there are “no helicopters, no rescue” in North Carolina; the federal government is “only giving $750” to people who lost their homes; and the Biden/Harris administration is receiving “universally negative reviews” on its response (like it’s a Yelp or Rotten Tomatoes evaluation).
Naturally, what would a racist diatribe from the traitor to this country be without ample swipes at immigrants?
The twice-impeached slumlord former host of Celebrity Apprentice claimed Harris “spent all her FEMA money on housing illegal migrants,” and $1 billion was “stolen from FEMA for migrants and has gone missing.”
He’s doing this because he knows people will believe him (maybe he believes it himself), compounding the damage the storms have inflicted.
President Biden called the adjudicated rapist out in a press conference last week:
Former President Trump has led this onslaught of lies. Assertions have been made that property is being confiscated. That’s simply not true.
They’re saying people impacted by these storms will receive $750 in cash and no more. That’s simply not true.
They’re saying in — the money is needed for this crisis is being diverted to migrants. What a ridiculous thing to say. It’s not true.
Now the claims are getting even more bizarre.
He then invoked MAGA darling Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who accused the federal government of “modifying” the weather.
Biden responded:
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman from Georgia, is now saying the federal government is literally controlling the weather — we’re controlling the weather. It’s beyond ridiculous. It’s got to stop. No one should make the American people question whether their government will be make — to ensure that this disaster, when it strikes, they’re be there. We will, all of us.
Marjorie Traitor…er…Taylor Greene is the same person who promoted the anti-Semitic tropes that “Rothschild Inc” may have used “lasers or blue beams of light” to start the California Camp fires in 2018.
Now she’s adding adding those lasers to her hurricane theory, claiming, “CBS, 9 years ago, talked about lasers controlling the weather.”
In 2013, CBS News aired a broadcast about an experiment using lasers to initiate rain and lightning.
These baseless rumors can cost lives.
Matthew Cappucci explained:
Science is one of the few things that doesn’t care about politics. If a tornado is coming down the road at you, it doesn’t check your voter registration.
University of Delaware Disaster Research Center professor Sarah DeYoung added that when people are just trying to locate water, food, and shelter, politically motivated rumors only cause more violence and chaos.
“It becomes particularly dangerous,” she explained, “because it starts to rile up additional feelings of division and then the false information about FEMA funneling money towards immigrants, that makes people who are immigrants more vulnerable to potential acts of violence and backlash from those kinds of rumors.”
Misinformation and climate change researcher Abbie Richards said:
When people feel really anxious, really powerless, really uncertain, those are the times where we expect misinformation to thrive. It’s a problem that by its very nature, makes people feel a wide range of pretty negative emotions — scared, anxious, uncertain — maybe guilty or conflicted if it’s something they’ve been denying. We are mixing these giant events that are catastrophic and devastating with these big emotions and it’s really easy for people to fall into scapegoating and blaming conspiracy theories that provide really simple explanations for these super complicated problems.
The toll is real.
Recently on the SiriusXM “Dan Abrams Show,” a North Carolina man named Anthony called in to detail how his father in law refused to accept FEMA relief money because he believed it meant the government was commandeering his home.
Describing how it was “breaking up his family,” Anthony said:
And my wife, my wife is — I mean, we’re literally, I mean, we’re at the point where, like, screw them. I mean, if they’re going to listen to Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity over us who have his best interest at heart, or my wife, my poor wife is like, the hell with them. Screw them. And it sucks. It really sucks in and I don’t understand how so many people are under the spell of this freaking con man. I don’t understand it.
I mean, he lost almost everything, and he’s refusing all help from the federal government and complaining to us that he doesn’t have food, that he doesn’t have the stuff he needs, and yet he won’t accept the help. What the hell are we supposed to do? We’re not in a position to be able to fly across the country and help him. There’s people begging us to get him to accept help and he won’t do it. And I guarantee you, I’m not the only one. I guarantee you I’m not the only one.
We’ve sent him, we’ve sent him all the FEMA bulletins. We’ve sent him all the stuff from the fact checkers. He doesn’t believe it. He thinks it’s all — he just believes Trump, literally, Dan. He just — it’s a cult! He’s a cult member. I’m sorry to say it. He’s a cult member. And he’s my father-in-law and it sucks.
Here is a list of GOP lawmakers who voted against funding FEMA before Hurricane Helene.
Some are now backpedaling.
Hi Ted,
This is an awesome and extremely important newsletter. I appreciate your thorough reporting of all the Hurricane related lies we’ve been hearing about this past few weeks. I hope this helps people to realize that our political lives have been seriously infected with a dangerous mental affliction and the issue is not government or elections or candidates. Rather, it is unstable, upset and angry fellow citizens who make up scenarios that harm and make fearful, other fellow citizens. It’s a misplaced national panic attack.
Your article puts it into clear terms and helps me to feel even more confident of the need to defeat MAGA thought this November. We cannot survive with this sad lack of sanity.