The Trump White House Twitter account got itself into another row last night with a tweet that was, even for the staff phone-it-inners using the account to highlight Fox News clips and pull the last meat off the bones of the Hatch Act, a bit weird.
The problem, as approximately infinity Twitter responders pointed out: It wasn't snowing. It wasn't even close to snowing. It was 70 freaking degrees in Washington yesterday, which is the opposite of snowing in at least one important way, and nobody could figure out what the hell Dear Leader's designated tweet staff was going on about. Was the White House trying to lie about the weather? To a city of people able to simply look outside?
This was the common initial interpretation, at least to many, because the answer to the question "Would the Trump-led American government lie about the weather?" is an emphatic "Yes, the Trump-led American government would absolutely lie about the weather." Among the most bizarre of White House lies was an infamous press conference last year in which Trump held up a poster-sized map showing the likely path of Hurricane Dorian with an additional part crudely drawn over it in black Sharpie to alter the official government forecast into a fake version that would support his (again, tweeted) claim that Alabama was in the storm’s path. The White House has a documented history of lying about the weather: It is well within the ballpark of what this new American government would lie about, just for the sake of maintaining an unfit manchild's most current public delusions.
So, tweeters asked: Was ... was the White House claiming it was snowing?
The dominant theory appears to be slightly less weird, if only just; the Republican National Committee's "rapid response director" rapid-responsed his own theory that the photo, taken last Tuesday, was not tweeted on that day because the Iranian military had just launched multiple missiles at U.S. troop in Iraq. "So the WH just saved the tweet for tonight," he tweeted.
So the White House was not reporting the weather; it was just running a weather rerun, so to speak, as news and government outlets are known for doing because it creates absolutely no public problems at all.
This too, however, remains only a theory. The White House, which has no apparent remaining press staff and no apparent ability to clarify what the flying bumplebump goes on even when it comes to decisions to assassinate foreign leaders, much less things like this, a few hours later seemingly attempted to clarify things with a new tweet linking to the White House Flickr page, which more accurately described the picture, but then The Washington Post reports they deleted that clearer tweet in what appears to be an intentional effort to, well, troll the nation because screw you, that's why.
The Post also reports that the White House didn't respond to their request for comment. Whether that is because the White House staff just can't be bothered to return reporter calls or because they are already huddling to figure out what rote task they can weirdly botch next is, as always, unclear.