There's never been anything like it: a potentially devastating hurricane battering the Carolinas, thousands of people evacuated, and the headlines? Well, they're mostly being dominated by Donald Trump's shit-show of a White House.
Initially, as Hurricane Florence gathered steam, all Trump had to do was summon reporters to the Oval Office and make a presidential display of basic concern and competence as the hurricane bore down on the Carolina coasts. Trump’s declaration that "it's tremendously big and tremendously wet" wasn't exactly the most inspiring call to arms as Americans braced for the worst, but frankly, Trump probably could have gotten by with it for the sheer fact that he was appropriately focused on the problem at hand.
But no, Trump couldn't stop there. Asked about Hurricane Maria, which tore through Puerto Rico last year leaving nearly 3,000 people dead in its wake, Trump started a war of realities: his own vs. the rest of the world's. "I think Puerto Rico was incredibly successful," he responded, calling his administration’s response an "unsung success" and "one of the best jobs that's ever been done."
Instead of managing to act like commander in chief for five minutes, he reinforced the reality that he's the most deeply insecure and detached lyin'est gasbag of a pr*sident this country has ever seen. (And no, I don't think that's subjective hyperbole). In other words, Trump successfully snatched defeat from the jaws of a potential victory even before Florence made landfall. It's a gift, that kind of political ineptitude.
By Friday morning, when all eyes would normally be glued to nothing but hurricane headlines, Trump had so hijacked the news that the New York Times editorial board charged: “Trump honors only one victim of Puerto Rico: Himself.”
But the self-inflicted wound didn't stop there. The front page of the Washington Post led with Florence, but also prominently featured "Trump denies Puerto Rico death toll," along with a story about Trump's Supreme Court nominee that would break wide open Friday morning: “Allegation roils Senate battle over Kavanaugh.”
The New Yorker finally posted the definitive Brett Kavanaugh piece early Friday, revealing a California woman had charged that when Kavanaugh was in high school, he and another boy had held her down while he tried to force himself on her.
That kind of revelation the week before a potentially era-shifting vote on a Supreme Court nominee, combined with Trump's inexplicably contemptuous lies about Puerto Rico’s fallen, would have normally been drowned out by Hurricane Florence’s Friday-morning landfall. But Trump's corruption knows no bounds.
By midmorning, the bombshell that Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges and agreed to cooperate with the special counsel's Russia investigation actually managed to interrupt what would have been pervasive hurricane coverage under any other circumstances.
Let's give credit where credit's due: only Donald Trump could possibly manage to produce headlines catastrophic enough to displace coverage of a natural disaster. Welcome to your preview of the run-up to the midterms.