The most important thing about Sharpiegate is that it didn’t have to be a thing at all. Donald Trump included Alabama in a list of states under threat from Hurricane Dorian last week either because he mixed up locations on a map, or because he was looking at a forecast that was several days out of date and showed the storm barely nicking the state. All it would have taken to resolve the issue was either a “whoops” or, better yet, simply ignoring the replies, and the whole thing would have been over.
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Trump didn’t do that. That’s why there is an issue. Because Trump cannot ever admit a mistake. Cannot let anything go. His infinitely delicate ego must be protected at all costs. Sharpiegate isn’t about a marker, or a map, or Alabama. It’s about the lengths to which Trump will go rather than simply owning up to being human. Sharpiegate is a little part of a huge problem.
As The New York Times reports, the slightest suggestion that Trump might have made a mistake resulted in a trickle-down of ignorance and retribution. When the Birmingham office of the National Weather Service reported that Alabama was under no threat from Dorian, Trump bristled. He then complained to eternally acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Mulvaney then went to scream at Commerce Secretary and hater of poor people Wilbur Ross. Ross then screamed at NOAA, threatening the jobs of forecasters for providing an accurate forecast. And finally NOAA produced an unsigned statement rebuking the Birmingham office.
As this ugly ball of crap was rolling downhill, Trump was conducting his own angry defense of his incorrect statement. That defense included over a dozen tweets and half a dozen maps over two days—including the one modified by the crude application of a black marker. It was an act that spawned a million hilarious memes. But it’s not funny.
Asked about his role in sending Mulvaney off to punch downwards, Trump—of course—denied it. “No, I never did that,” said Trump. “I never did that. That’s a whole hoax by the fake news media. When they talk about the hurricane and when they talk about Florida and they talk about Alabama, that’s just fake news. It was—right from the beginning, it was a fake story.” He’s right. It was a fake story. One written and executed by Trump.
The lengths that Trump has gone to on this story, and the effort he has exerted in pushing back on every point are not made better by the utterly trivial nature of the underlying issue. Despite Trump’s error, store shelves did not clear in Alabama. From Weather Service bulletins to local forecasts, meteorologists went on providing accurate information, regardless of Trump’s national snit fit. No matter what Trump was saying about the course of the storm, no one took it seriously. But they could have.
Had Trump made such a statement with a faster-moving storm only hours away from the coast, his false statements really could have both caused injuries and hampered efforts to direct attention to those areas genuinely under threat. That’s a big part of why knowingly falsifying a weather forecast is illegal. His statement would not have been nearly so funny if it had resulted in a body count.
Sharpiegate didn’t kill anyone. It didn’t send volunteers scrambling in the wrong direction and hasn’t, yet, led to Trump misappropriating millions of dollars needed in areas actually suffering from disasters.
But it’s a perfect example of how Trump will not admit an error, will force his staff to back him up, and will bully officials up and down the line into toeing his line. No matter how crooked. That instinct, that basic component of Trump’s personality, does have an impact on dozens of issues every single day.
In just one example, thousands of Bahamians who genuinely did lose everything to the hurricane in not-Alabama are being refused entry to the United States on the ludicrous grounds that people whose homes were flattened, flooded, and destroyed—whose whole communities have been removed from the map—are still expected to produce all their paperwork. Because otherwise they could be “gang members” who cleverly appeared on a devastated island so they could infiltrate the United States as refugees.
Trump won’t back down on that any more than he would admit his Alabama error. And this line goes right through people’s lives.