Democratic strategist and former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once stated that “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” That philosophy seemed to be the playbook for the media and pundits immediately after the flood in Texas as many rushed to claim that it was caused by Trump budget cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS). From George Stephanopoulos to Rosie O’Donnell, the hoax was spread that there was an understaffing at the NWS that may have caused these deaths. It did not matter that it was an easy matter to confirm or that the underlying claims of understaffing the NWS team were false.
The weaponization of such tragedies has become commonplace in American politics. Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer has repeated the false claims. Previously, Schumer bizarrely attempted to blame the crash of a Mexican ship in New York and air accidents around the world on Trump cuts.
There are legitimate reasons to question whether cuts to agencies like the NWS might impact key programs, such as weather warning systems. There are also questions about whether long-standing forecast modeling failed to capture the severity of this particularly storm. However, basic honesty and decency would demand a modicum of inquiry before blaming the NWS for a failure that caused mass deaths, including a large number of children.
Indeed, the rush to claim that the tragedy was caused by understaffing can make it more difficult to find any real failures in the system. It is also possible that this was a convergence of weather systems that happened so fast (and late at night) that few citizens could take meaningful action. Some reports indicate that the river rose by 20 feet in only 45 minutes.
Nevertheless, many rushed to take political advantage of the tragedy. Grant Stern, the executive editor of Occupy Democrats wrote on X “It only took 9 days for Trump’s cuts to the [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] to kill dozens of children in Texas when Tropical Storm Barry landed this week.”In reality, the NWS had extra personnel working the storm and issued the first warning 12 hours before the flood. Moreover, even assuming that the cuts to the NWS might impact warning systems, they are not even scheduled to take effect until next year. While there were retirements and resignations early in the Trump Administration, there is no evidence that those departures are impacting weather warnings, let alone this emergency. However, the media pounced as the death toll rose.
Even after the Administration refuted the false claims, they were still being promulgated by the press. On ABC’s This Week George Stephanopoulos ominously declared “We’re also learning there were significant staffing shortfalls to the National Weather Services offices in the region.”Whatever “shortfalls” are being reported “in the region”, they did not appear to impact the early warning given 12 hours earlier or the fact that there were extra, not fewer, staffers working the storm.
Again, none of this mattered. Politicians and pundits, such as Hakeem Jeffries and Adam Kinzinger, joined the chorus to suggest that cuts would make this a repeated failure.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) told CNN Sunday the NWS should be investigated. “I don’t think it’s helpful to have missing key personnel from the National Weather Service not in place to help prevent these tragedies.”
As parents mourned dead children, commentators rushed to lay the losses at the feet of the Administration. Ron Filipkowski, the editor-in-chief of MediasTouchNews, wrote “The people in Texas voted for government services controlled by Donald Trump and Greg Abbott. That is exactly what they (sic) getting.”
Rachel Bitecofer, assistant director at Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center for Public Policy declared “What has happened to the girls at Camp Mystic is EXACTLY what one of the country’s best meteorologists, John Morales, warned would happen. Trump’s cuts to the NOAA & NWS have critically impacted storm prediction nationwide.”
Rosie O’Donnell, who famously fled the United States for the safety of Ireland after the election, added to the false narrative:
“What a horror story in Texas. When the president guts all of the early warning systems and the weathering forecast abilities of the government, these are the results that we’re going to start to see on a daily basis.”
There are obvious familiar aspects to the news coverage. It takes very little for the media to seed a false, viral story. It quickly enters the echo chamber and is repeated on countless social media sites. When it is finally debunked, the media just shrugs and walks away.
Whether it was the false story about agents whipping migrants in Texas or the photo op claim in Lafayette Park, false stories were disproven only to have a collective shrug from those who spread them.
Heading into the presidential debate, the White House and the media attacked Fox News and other outlets for “cheap fake” videos designed to make the President look confused and feeble. For months, politicians and pundits insisted that Biden was sharp and commanding in conversations even after Special Counsel Robert Hur cited his decline as a reason for not charging him criminally.
On MSNBC, Joe Scarborough stated “start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth. And F— you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I have known him for years…If it weren’t the truth I wouldn’t say it.”
When the truth came out after the election loss, reporters ran around claiming that they were shocked by the fact that Biden was indeed mentally and physically diminished. By that point, it did not matter. Biden was out and the truth could be reported in a slew of belated books and articles.
Yet, some media outlets have refused to acknowledge false stories even after they were debunked. At the Washington Post, columnist Philip Bump previously had a meltdown in an interview when confronted about past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that it stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.
Many media outlets pushed such stories because they knew that their readers want the claims to be true — and will not be outraged (or even convinced) when the stories are later debunked. Notably, when the New York Times recently ran a confirmed story that was negative for the Democratic mayoral nominee in New York, liberal readers and pundits were outraged.
Once again, we need to see what went wrong in Texas to try to avoid such tragedies in the future. However, the NWS appears to have done its job with adding extra staff and reportedly issuing the first warnings 12 hours in advance. We need to look at precisely when those warnings were issued during the critical period and what information they conveyed. The hair-triggered response of the media to weaponize the tragedy should also be reviewed. However, it is far more likely that there will be changes to emergency procedures than any serious change to journalistic practices.
Nostradamus predicted that Orange Man is bad and will be responsible for calamity in Texas.
Nice joke. It made me chuckle. 😆
I live in Texas and like all Texans and those who have lived here long know, when it rains in Texas, it pours. I live next to a dry lake and have seen it fill up literally in fifteen minutes from a single cloudburst overhead. The NWS had been issuing flash flood warnings all week. The problem is that as one young Kerrville woman said on The Weather Channel, “They issue flash flood alerts here every time it rains.” There’s a reason there are flood gauges in every creek along every road in the state.
First off there is no Democrat party, just a group minority Marxist each with its own agenda. They agree on one thing dismantle the American capitalist system. They offer fear, threats and blame to control the weak of mind.
In Other News: “Pundits blame Trump for Sun’s Recent Coronal Mass Ejection”
~+~
A MSNBC scientific contributor yesterday blamed the Trump Administration for a recent large plasma Coronal Mass Ejection into the heliosphere as both an attempt to censor satellite news feeds of liberal news networks and was also the result of climate change on Earth.
The contributor’s suggestion led to rather mercurial resposes from astrophysicists.
Seriously, the Chinese dammed the Yangtze River and the water is so huge and heavy it caused a wobble of the earth and actually changed time by a microsecond.
No kidding. That’s probably the biggest man made change to earth ever. Scary stuff and we have problems with the Guadalupe?
Hats off China
Cliff Mass, a University of Washington professor of Climatology, has a fair, very thorough, and interesting analysis of the Texas flood.
*. Thank you. No flood warning system in place for Kerr County and never has had. The professor says they should have been evacuated but for no plans in that county.
The NWS warned but no one listened?
I need Bernoullis principle applied before Rosie O’Donnell comments again.
Some commenter noted an act of God but no one listened in Kerr county … local problem.
Stevie Ray Vaughn — Texas Flood
The professor suggests blaming NWS borders a criminal act, perhaps PT suggests honesty and decency.
*. Honesty and decency aside, I need an explanation by an honest and decent engineer to explain how water can rise 20 feet in 45 minutes! I need a complete explanation using contour maps and water loads from physics geniuses….Jesus H. Christ!
Did God slip a message to Noah?
Even with extra staff at NWS and advanced warnings issued; sadly, The Science™ still failed these campers and families. Armchair Leftists and media setting their own hair on fire after the fact isn’t helping anyone – including themselves.
JAFO,
I respectfully disagree with the science failing them. I agree with George W at 1107, whomever was in charge at Mystic Camp is the one who failed them. I keep the NOAA radar open in my browser and have seen serious thunderstorms spawn right above us in 15 minutes where the radar was clear before. We keep the radio on all day, just in case of NWS warnings.
And when threatening weather is forecast for overnight, I don’t sleep but stay up and alert.
In this case you would think someone in the camps would have the midnight watch
Fair points, Upstate. That the camp was unprepared for something this serious may go to the fact there hasn’t been flooding of this magnitude in more than 25 years. Should camps have weather radios? Certainly. Have there been too many false alerts issued during the last 25+ years since the last flood emergency? I don’t know nor even if that would have been a factor for this tragedy. I do think this is not the time to point fingers and look for blame placement.
JAFO,
Unfortunately, the fact there has not been significant flooding may have lead them to think it would be nothing. Seems to me, for a camp like that, there would be a night watch person for things like this and other emergencies.
I like the idea another poster suggested: Put sirens along the rivers in places less populated, like camping areas – in addition to someone being up and en garde at all hours. I would imagine the sirens could be setup with auto sensing equipment to measure river levels as they rise, then turn on automatically, in sequence, downriver as quickly as the flood waters rise. It would give more directed warning to those along the river, supplementing NWS predictions and alerts.
Either way, this is one of those events where even if someone was awake they most likely wouldn’t see or hear coming that killer wall of water over the noise of the storm. (I also wonder if camps run any kind of evacuation drills knowing there’s been this kind of emergency in the past.)
JAFO,
Those are some good ideas. The fire station up the way, will activate it’s siren if there is danger of a ice dam breaking which then sends a flood of water down stream.
Several companies make radios that sit in passive mode until there is a warning then the radio kicks on.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoor-gear/g36319121/best-noaa-weather-radios/
LOCAL agencies refused greater warning systems!!
I am a native Texan. My entire family went to summer camps down along the Guadalupe River. I cannot remember anything like what happened that would have alerted folks to a 20 or 30 foot wall of water, which is what is reported to have occurred.
Flash floods have long haunted the Texas Hill Country
https://www.kvue.com/article/news/history/flash-floods-texas-hill-country-guadalupe-river-history/269-aa40ee53-fab5-4ad6-8943-e5b089282399
Warning systems of pending disaster depend on individuals and their judgments of the magnitude of the impact. This particular disaster could not be predicted, the forecasters knew of pending rain, but no way to determine the amount of rainfall in any individual storm system, the extent of the area which will be impacted the greatest, and whether the creek will rise to epic proportions. Forecasters had some 30 minutes to issue warnings but again they could not know the volume of water now flowing and at which speed the wall was traveling: (just a few points to consider). As the old saying goes, Hindsight is Twenty-Twenty
Insurance underwriters understand this and include Force Majeure in their underwriting, limiting or eliminating liability for injuries, losses and damages resulting from acts of God.
It’s easy to point fingers and proclaim “You dirty SOB it’s your fault” when you have skin in the game!
George W
*. In the US emergency preparedness is stellar. The US isn’t a 3rd world with such events at all unless it’s what has never happened before. Think earthquakes. In the US buildings are torn down if not within code and not left standing as traps.
This is one more example of 3rd world expectations, dumbing down. Kerr County had no plan, it’s local. UNHEARD OF!
The US acts hand- in -hand with God’s warnings. The US says- we’re ready for you, God. Give us a hit.
And you this how?
Uh, not sure I would call American emergency preparedness as stellar, looking at how some in FEMA would exclude homes damaged in a hurricane if they displayed Trump support. Regardless of that, if people do not listen to warnings and take action, no matter what warnings are issued, they made their bed. Now, not only do they have to lay in it, but in this case, their poor decisions made others lay it in as well.
Regrettably.
A media that screams crisis hoping for a reaction without thinking. Where else do we see that? Email scams. That media hopes we don’t spy the company they are keeping. Because when we do our instinct is to delete both.
If democrats didn’t have lies and character assassinations to offer voters, they’d have nothing.
The real question no one seems to be willing to address, while throwing around baseless claims, is despite given warnings both Wednesday and Thursday by the NWS-Austin/San Antonio office, the NWS San Angelo office and the Texas Division of Emergency Management, the long history of flash flooding in the area, why did the people in charge of Camp Mystic not move to higher ground like those at Mo-Ranch Camp who moved several hundred campers to higher ground?
If a tree falls and no one hears it then the media claims it didn’t fall!
Fact! Excellent description.
The desperation of Democrats to find anything they can to interrupt the MAGA winning streak has reached fever pitch. From climate change to racism and DOGE, I’m surprised under-staffing by trans-meteorologists hasn’t been touted.. yet
If they had a 12 hour, why did the camp do nothing to protect the children?
I think the byline says it all. We need to keep our heads when all about us are losing theirs and blaming it on us.
Nice Kipling reference.
There’s no link to open the article.
Obviously because the article had false information, so it has been pulled to try to correct something.
I’ve been fortunate to have seen, done, and experienced lots in my life so far. But I never, never, never even contemplated that MEDIA, under the auspices of America’s great First Amendment, could be so used to manipulate, spin, and attempt to influence -and indeed, try to destroy,- a political party or person, as we now witness. It is unrelenting, and I hope all of us stay strong and keep the faith! To all the good people, we are there for you, in thought, spirit, and presence!
Did you not see the stupidly long coverage in Benghazi, e-mails, the laptop, and many others?
This is what the media does, you just do t like it because they are calling Trump out for putting people at major risk due to his cuts.
And all that “coverage” of hillary was done, truthfully that is, by the right while the left either ignored or covered up for her. And if there were so much evidence against hillary, why is she still walking free? Because the media arm of the prog/left and their compatriots in congress, protected her with their lies. Try again pushing false narratives, we just laugh at them.
Supposed cuts that haven’t even…. happened yet? That’s a good one. Can we rent your time machine?
What did Biden’s autopen pardon his crackhead son for, if not for the laptop? Sounds like big news to me.
Benghazi, the illegal war that the Obama regime launched (without Congressional authorization, OH NO!!!), and incompetently executed, resulting in the murders of Americans, along with the necessary lying and coverup to protect the future Democrat presidential candidate? Sounds like big news to me.
How’s Libya these days, a liberal democratic paradise? What’s that you say, collapsed government, open-air slave markets? Oh well, at least you tried.
The real question is why aren’t you bothered by any of this. Guess you’re just too much of a partisan hack.
“But I never, never, never even contemplated that MEDIA, under the auspices of America’s great First Amendment, could be so used to manipulate, spin, and attempt to influence -and indeed, try to destroy,- a political party or person, as we now witness.”
Really? Ever? Apparently Fox News constantly attacking president Obama and Biden with manipulation, spinning, and gaslighting completely went by your line of sight.
Ignorance is indeed a blessing in your world Lin.
Georgie calling ANYONE else ignorant is truly the pot calling the kettle black. The lack of self-awareness in Georgie is a sight to behold.
poor georgie, no reading comprehension or context. If he were smart (at least 5th grade) he would see that if you remove the middle clause and just read, “never even contemplated that MEDIA….could be so used to…destroy a political party or person, as we now witness,”
I read that to mean she has never seen it so bad before “as we now witness.”
Quite simple, really. Poor georgie.
Just CAN it george
Meteorologists Say the National Weather Service Did Its Job in Texas
DOGE cut hundreds of jobs at the NWS, but experts who spoke to WIRED say the agency accurately predicted the state’s weekend flood risk.
DustOff,
Correct!
As I have proven, the NWS and the TDEM did their jobs, correctly. The acted accordingly. It was not their fault that there were those do did not heed the warnings and if they did not know the history of the region, that is on THEM! Unfortunately, there were those who in the hubris, thought they knew better while their neighboring camps, heard the warnings and acted accordingly to keep them and the campers safe. I am sorry for those whom were lost to this tragic event.
Hey George!!! “Lin” said she’s never thought it could get as bad “as we now witness.”
And that was enough to trigger you? She is probably right, but I don’t know how long she’s been around.
It is non-stop now.
But the fact that it triggered you so much that you had to humiliate yourself? Ha, speaks for itself, Clown!
It appears that all that the prog/left has remaining to them are lies and whipped up chaos.
Uh, where’s the article? All I can see are the comments
Something must of happened on the WP/server side. I can see the article.
Deleted.
Because of DOGE cuts to the FCC.
Had to switch to another browser, myself. Chrome doesn’t show the article’s text today for unknown reasons.