Trumpian Excuses on the Texas Flood Deaths
Donald Trump may not be very good at running things, but when it comes to shifting blame, he is truly world class. As the magnitude of the disaster in Texas becomes clearer, the one thing we can be certain of is that Trump will accept none of the responsibility.
He will insist that his decision to have mass layoffs at the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) and National Weather Service (NWS) had nothing to do with the state’s lack of preparedness for the storm and the inadequate response. At this point it is not clear whether the layoffs at the agencies played a role in the warnings given or the speed of the response to the floods.
The Texas offices were clearly understaffed. However, we don’t know whether that impeded their operations in important ways.
We do know that global warming makes events like the Texas floods both more common and more extreme. For that reason, we certainly can blame Trump’s efforts to promote global warming with increased subsidies for fossil fuels and ending support for electric vehicles and clean energy. We can anticipate many more weather disasters in the years head thanks to Trump’s policies.
Weather and natural disasters are far from the only area where Trump refuses to take responsibility for his actions. The........
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