President Trump, it has been reported in all seriousness, is a hateful, racist conspiracy theorist hellbent on ridiculing the deaths of some 3,000 Puerto Ricans reportedly killed by the double hurricanes that blasted the island territory last year.
Only a monster like Donald Trump would dare politicize the weather. Or turn every natural disaster into a political cudgel in this manner.
Oh, wait! Donald Trump did not do that.
For years, leftist hacks in the Democrat Party and conspiracy loons in the media dreamed of cobbling together a never-ending, self-generating political smear machine that would automatically fight to destroy their enemies with relentless abandon.
Impossible! No such thing could be invented! Even if such a thing did exist, only a truly soulless, dishonest and evil sorcerer of politics would unleash such a diabolic genie.
Then Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, a year after President George W. Bush blindsided all the media and the entire political world by winning re-election over their strenuous objections.
All bets were off. The frothing jackals began yipping. They circled. Went in for the kill.
Within a couple of days of Hurricane Katrina, it was all Mr. Bush’s fault. He may have even personally detonated bombs to blow up the levees in New Orleans.
Ever since the weather has been all about politics. Every time there is a hurricane, it is blamed on the nearest Republican. If a Republican is in the White House, then the “act of nature” is blamed on him — along with every casualty resulting from it.
If Barack Obama is in the White House for a hurricane — or a massive oil leak in the Gulf or anything else that would destroy a mortal politician — then it becomes a photo opportunity during which Mr. Obama can blame Republicans for all manner of atrocities, but mainly racial inequality and divisiveness.
One of the many wonderful and spectacular things about the Trump presidency is how the mere existence of Mr. Trump in the White House causes his most rabid enemies to reflexively reveal themselves. They become their truest, most disgusting selves.
So, when Hurricane Florence began gathering in the Atlantic Ocean, the press dispatched an army of reporters-turned-activists to the Carolinas so they could blame the storm on Mr. Trump, against a dramatic backdrop of staggering winds and ferocious storm waters.
Normally they wait until the first person doesn’t get a bottled water to blame the president.
Not this time.
Florence had not even reached the beach when The Washington Compost declared Mr. Trump “complicit” in the formation of the storm. (Really, I am not making this up. It was an editorial stating the paper’s official position.)
In addition to blaming Mr. Trump for the wicked winds of Hurricane Florence, The Compost also — even more bizarrely — blamed him for “slowing the wind currents that guide hurricanes, making storms more sluggish and, therefore, apt to linger longer over disaster zones.”
See, that way they can blame Mr. Trump for not only the hurricane but also the flooding and looting and everything that goes with a storm of this magnitude.
My question is this: Since Hurricane Florence is Mr. Trump’s fault, does that mean he gets credit when it downgraded from a Category 3 storm to a Category 2? And then from a Category 2 storm to a Category 1 and, finally, to a tropical depression?
I wouldn’t bet on it.
• Charles Hurt can be reached at churt@washingtontimes.com; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.
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