The top story on the front page of today’s Houston Chronicle is about another looney Trump conspiracy theory pouring from his fevered brain that even has Trump supporters in Texas scratching their heads over this one. The headline at the top of today’s Chronicle is: “Trump’s Harvey remark causes stir — Officials unable to explain claim that Texans watched storm from boats”. How does that grab your gaiters. You can read the full article here, it is not behind the usual Chronicle paywall. I live in Houston and my wife and I went through Hurricane Harvey and saw the devastation first hand, even though thankfully our home was not flooded and made it through intact.
Now Trump was on a conference call yesterday with state and federal leaders preparing for this year’s possibly severe hurricane season when Trump dropped this little gem during the conference call (bolding mine):
“Sixteen thousand people, many of them in Texas, for whatever reason that is. People went out in their boats to watch the hurricane. That didn’t work out too well.”
President Donald Trump
Holy shit. Plus it’s barely grammatical besides being so alarmingly wrong. Here’s the first paragraph from today’s Houston Chronicle article by Andrea Zelinski and St. John Barned-Smith:
President Donald Trump praised the Coast Guard for its heroics during Hurricane Harvey on Wednesday, but he credited the high number of water rescues to people taking their boats out to watch the storm roll in, baffling first responders.
Baffling would be putting it mildly. More from the Chronicle article:
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez took umbrage with the president’s remarks, crediting civilians with making an “extraordinary effort” with their own boats to rescue neighbors, relatives and pets as Harvey flooded the Texas coast with 52 inches of rain last year.
“I didn’t see anyone taking the approach that would reflect his comments,” Gonzalez said. “I’ll be sure to invite the president to ride out the next hurricane in a jon boat in Galveston Bay the next time one approaches,” he added.
Zing! And now for the pièce de résistance from the article (bolding mine):
No one could explain the president’s comment.
Ya think. Of course what Trump actually saw were civilians in their own boats assisting the Coast Guard in the rescue of tens of thousands of people from the historic flooding and high water here in Texas after Hurricane Harvey had passed through. These civilians were not on the Gulf of Mexico in their boats during the hurricane lollygagging and watching the storm. They were hunkered down until the storm passed, and then came out unselfishly to help their fellow citizens in time of need. That’s what Trump saw and failed to comprehend (perhaps because he doesn’t understand unselfish behavior). At least he didn’t try to throw paper towels at us.
Here’s some further explication from the article:
“During Harvey, certainly that community — those who were able to get out and help their neighbors — that was really a game changer for us in meeting the extraordinary demand for evacuations,” he [Houston Fire Chief Sam Peña] said. “Without the assistance of private citizens in their own boats… we could have had a more difficult time in getting to everybody that needed assistance.”
…
“I’m not aware of anybody in Harris County on a boat in the midst of the storm and its aftermath as a matter of leisure or entertainment,” he [Spokesman for Harris County’s Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management Francisco Sanchez] said. “The response from our community members and folks at the Cajun Navy that brought their boats, put them in the water to rescue people and to help, filled the gap that we couldn’t simply because of size and scope of what Hurricane Harvey was doing to our community.”
…
By the end of the storm, members of the Cajun Navy and other civilian volunteer organizations had rescued 35,000 people.
I’ll close with a quote from Taylor Fontenot, one of these civilian first responders who went out with the civilian rescue boats after the storm, about Trump’s comment:
“For it to be looked lightly on or diminished, or seen as a joke — it’s kind of a slap in the face.”
These comments from Trump, in my personal opinion, are the ravings of a lunatic madman. And it disparages all these brave civilians and their own boats in rescuing so many stranded people that the Coast Guard was just too overloaded to reach. Finally as a point of personal privilege, please observe that the three Houston officials quoted in the article and in this diary are all Hispanic. Órale. That’s the Houston I love.