Milton Threatens to Deplete National Supply of Trump Lies

The hurricane is so powerful, observers think it may overwhelm Trump's vast capacity for bullshit

Oct. 8: Meteorologists are losing their credentialed shit … Real questions about FEMA … Trump says he’s been to Gaza which he has not … Biden orders all lead water pipes gone (eventually) …

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Then-Pres. Donald Trump on Sept. 4, 2019, presenting a hurricane map that stunned observers with a hand-drawn alteration that both depicted a false storm track but also failed to make Florida look more like a penis. (Screengrab / Washington Post video.)

Hurricane Milton is now so strong that some analysts predict it may simply overwhelm former Pres. Donald Trump’s ability to lie about it when it makes landfall on Wednesday.

Trump’s capacity for distributing fresh, potable falsehoods was already taxed by last week’s response to Hurricane Helene. (Here’s three roundups of Trump’s Helene lies: AP, Salon, CNN.)

And social media is already flooded with clips of local-news meteorologists freaking the fuck out about true Milton things. Here’s Noah Bergren, Fox35 Orlando:

“This is nothing short of astronomical. I am at a loss for words to meteorologically describe [to] you the storms small eye and intensity… with 180 MPH max sustained winds and gusts 200+ MPH. This is now the 4th strongest hurricane ever recorded by pressure on this side of the world… This hurricane is nearing the mathematical limit of what Earth's atmosphere over this ocean water can produce.”

And you may have seen the video of John Morales of NBC6 in South Florida. He pauses multiple times, presumably to freak the fuck out of viewers who can’t believe they’re watching a seasoned meteorologist have to collect himself due to the immensity of a storm that hasn’t hit yet. And then Morales’s voice quavers with nerdily-adorable/terrifying emotion on the word “millibars,” like some scuba-diving Neil Degrasse Tyson marveling at marine evolution as a squid squoze him to death: 

“Just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane. It has dropped — [pause to freak the fuck out of viewers] it has dropped 50 millibars in ten hours. I apologize. This is just horrific.”

And then, laudably, there was this from Morales:

“The seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot, record hot, as you might imagine. You know what’s driving that. I don’t need to tell you. Global warming, climate change…”

Milton grew in ferocity as it tore from the Yucatan toward Tampa/St. Pete like a college student drunk on gasoline fumes and cow farts looking for Spring Break seven months late. As of this morning, it was a Category 4 storm, with winds of 155 miles per hour fueled by the energy Milton’s guzzling from the warmed-up Gulf of Mexico like, well, a drunken college student shotgunning a fucking keg.

Forecasters — or as we should call them now, Gorecasters — expect Milton to hit Tampa Bay on Wednesday, somewhat weaker than it is now, but capable of sustaining hurricane force for its entire tear across the Florida peninsula, effectively castrating The Penis State.

It’s the first time in a century that a major hurricane will hit the Tampa Bay area, but even without touching down there, Helene and its storm surge caused unprecedented flooding. A friend and loyal Newsfucker told me yesterday that the flooding led to everyone dumping their sopping wet, ruined crap out on the curbs, where overwhelmed sanitation services have yet to pick it up…

…which means it’s now all ammunition to become Milton’s missiles firing through the air.

And Milton’s storm surge is expected to go even higher than Helene’s. In America’s flattest state.

There was a small ray of metaphorical sunshine yesterday. Despite being residents of Florida, people in the area finally seem to have looked up “evacuation” in the dictionary. On Monday, two days before landfall, the cars were already filling the highways, snaking away from Milton’s path, leaving only Jesus to watch over the forlorn landscape of abandoned pawn shops and strip clubs.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has already swung into action, with 7,000 federal workers mobilized to help, and communications professionals preparing to get sandbagged by a second round of Trump lies.

Trump has been lying about Helene, claiming FEMA is only helping Democrats and used up its disaster funds distributing American flags to immigrants to burn for warmth (I made up what he made up, but with any given lie it’s just a matter of time until Trump starts sharing it, so why not).

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been assisting Trump’s efforts, as his platform is delivering antisemitic lies about the relief efforts to millions of people in the Helene disaster zone.

Luckily, FEMA has been working with Republican governors and other officials to resist the tide of Trump lies.

That said, FEMA is not in great shape. Last week, Homeland [sic] Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the [hurricane] season." And that was before Milton arrived.

And so, of course, Congress swung into action left town. Pres. Joe Biden urged Congress to reconvene and approve new disaster-relief funds, but this weekend House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said nah. Republican God helps those who hire lobbyists.

Which doesn’t mean there won’t be relief aid for Milton. It does mean that the survivors of previous disasters will see FEMA hit pause on their recovery efforts and shift resources to the more immediate needs of Milton (in addition to the still-ongoing Helene efforts).

Such as, from just the past two weeks:

• Vermont flooding and landslides

• Kansas tornadoes

• Tropical Storm Debby

• The Arizona Watch Fire¹

The New York Times reported last night that FEMA’s staffing shortages are so severe only 10% of its personnel are available to respond to Milton. FEMA told the Times “FEMA is built for this,” but the article’s whole tone is “Yeah, maybe not.”

Meanwhile, of course, we have an entire U.S. military with tons of resources, which is lending some support but nothing like the response we’d see if Hurricane Milton had a face and a dirty bomb and was named Hurricane Ahmed.

Anyway, the good news for Republicans is that no matter how many lives lost and how much damage is done by Hurricane Milton, just think of how much money America saved by not preventing it when we still had a chance and Republicans warned us that doing so would cost too much.

FLASHBACKS (Courtesy of the Howard Zinn people): In 1990, the White House of former oil man George H.W. Bush changed the testimony of a government scientist to downplay the threat of fossil fuels fueling global warming.

In 1991, the Bush administration rejected proposed emissions caps that would “hurt the nation's economy in the short term.” The long term is expected to make landfall just around midnight tomorrow.

And, y’know, the science fiction of the 1990s that we thought we’d have today was jet packs and artificial intelligence that helped us fool the Klingons. Instead we get superstorms spawned by the fossil-fuel combustion complex and our evil geniuses are Big Oil marketing departments.

Trump Forced to Import Falsehoods from the Middle East

Remember how important it was that Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) was full of folksy midwestern shit when he said he was in Tiananmen Square during the protests? And, in fact, he didn’t get there until a few months later? And how we all struggled to give a shit during the relentless focus and the repeated questions from media who still can’t figure out why they’re losing audience?

Wait till they get a load of former Pres. Donald Trump’s own geography whoopsy-doodle yesterday.

Faced with the near-depletion by Hurricane Helene of his fiction supply, Trump yesterday resorted to outsourcing a new lie to the Middle East.

On right-wing radio, Trump was asked whether Gaza could be rebuilt and said it could:

“It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything. It’s got, it is the best. I’ve said it for years. You know, when, I’ve been there — and it’s rough, it’s a rough place — before the, you know, before all of the attacks and before the back and forth what’s happened over the last couple of years.”

Host Hugh Hewitt, of course, did not press Trump on the lie, because that’s not his job.

Trump has a history of manufacturing his lies right here in America, perhaps the only thing he produces domestically using American labor. But yesterday, he was speaking, of course, on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, sometimes referred to as Israel’s 9/11.

Trump’s new lie appeared to be an homage to his 9/11 lie. No, not the one about his building being tallest, the one in which he and a team of workers were helping out at Ground Zero.

As the New York Times notes, Trump has been to the West Bank, a mere 20 miles from Gaza. So maybe it was a Sarah Palin “I can see Russia from my house” kinda moment.² Asked to explain this new lie, Trump’s campaign told the Times that “Gaza is in Israel. President Trump has been to Israel.” Meaning, by the transitive property of geography, Trump has been to Gaza.

One minor hitch: Gaza is not in Israel.

Biden Orders Water Utilities to Remove All Lead Pipes Immediately in Ten Years

Water utilities — which used to be run by our local governments until The Greatest Generation™ stupidly sold them to rapacious capitalists for nickels on the dollar — have been ordered by the federal government to remove all of their dangerous lead pipes by noon today midnight tomorrow next year the year after that 2028 2030 2034 and not one year later, mister!

The Environmental Protection Agency rule requiring water companies to stop poisoning us was formalized today, even though it might hurt the precious, precious, short-term economy.

Lead pipes are known to poison our water — hampering children’s development, learning, and behavioral abilities and in adults causing high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney problems, and cancer. But removing the pipes would cost utility owners money, an essential nutrient for being rich.

The new rule will affect some nine million people who are still getting their water with added-bonus lead in it. Here are some of the so-called “benefits” of the rule that Pres. Joe Biden apparently thinks are worth jeopardizing the short-term economy:

• Preventing low birth weights in as many as 900,000 newborns,

• Preventing as many as 2,600 cases of childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and

• Preventing as many as 1,500 heart-disease deaths.

The Biden administration has already replaced more than 367,000 lead pipes nationwide, depriving almost a million people of free lead in their water and causing the current economic recession in which we are not.

On a related note, the average profit margin for water utilities is 19.34% (yes, I looked it up, we’re not newsfucking around here, people). Which means if voters decided to own their own water supplies again, they’d save about one out of five dollars of their water bill. Plus whatever savings they get from not overpaying the Invisible Hand’s C-suite salaries anymore.

Supreme Court Sends Warning Shots on Election Bullshit

The right-wing, executive-power-loving Supreme Court yesterday signaled a dim view of Republican lies about voting. Multiple cases premised on Republican pretend suspicions about voting integrity were before the court. And they all failed just as consistently as Rudy Giuliani lost every single one of his election cases and his reputation and his bar admission and his money and his dignity.

Pres. Joe Biden had ordered federal agencies to assist with voter registration and access. Obviously, the party of freedom had a problem with that. So, nine Republican secretaries of state and 11 GOP members of Congress asked the Supreme Court to stop making it easier for you to vote.

But maybe the GOP forgot that the Supreme Court just gave presidents super-enhanced powers, including criminal immunity, invulnerability, super-strength, flying, and freeze breath. So, yesterday, the Republicans lost.

Republicans also claimed some bullshit about voting machines in Pennsylvania. They lost.

And they made up some crap about Dominion Voting Systems. They lost.

Hilariously, those latter two claims were so flimsy, the Associated Press doesn’t even bother to explain what they were, an approach I kinda dig.

Campaign Watch

PRESIDENT The former head of the Florida Republican Party endorsed Vice Pres. Kamala Harris for president yesterday. It’s been a while since Al Cárdenas chaired his state party. But he was also chair of the American Conservative Union just ten years ago.

Of course, that was when the official conservative position was that Adolph Hitler was bad. 

Naturally, because conservative leaders are best at seeing shit when it directly personally relates to them, Cárdenas, a Cuban immigrant, said yesterday he was responding to immigrant scapegoating:

“[T]he White House asked Congress to pass a bill to — a supplemental bill — to really help people with these [natural] disasters, because we may be running outta cash. All of a sudden, the trolling — the Trump operatives and everybody else — started saying, well, they’re giving that money to illegal immigrants. Not true.”

Will the endorsement help Harris in Florida? With Latino-Americans? Or at least Cuban-Americans? Maybe!

My question, as always, is if keeping former Pres. Donald Trump from power is so important, wouldn’t it help to keep the Senate in Democratic control and back the campaign of former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL) against Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), especially considering how close it’s been?

TCB

You can find my original reporting at Jonathan Larsen’s Substack, and you can support TFN’s original snarking with a donation or a paid subscription.

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Go get ‘em, kids!

1. Which was allegedly started by a guy named Keanu Dude. See? Planetary devastation has its lighter side!

2. Palin didn’t quite say this.