It was bad enough that Donald Trump refused to cancel a $250,000 fundraiser and political rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on Wednesday as Hurricane Michael wrecked the gulf coast.
Hours after the storm made landfall, Trump made it much worse by taking to Twitter to brag about the crowd size of his rally – again, the rally he should have never held under the circumstances along the gulf coast.
According to multiple reports, Hurricane Michael has already led to at least one fatality.
A short time ago, the narcissist-in-chief posted this video of the “massive overflow crowd” that turned out in Pennsylvania on Wednesday night.
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Massive overflow crowd tonight in Erie, Pennsylvania. THANK YOU to everyone who came out and joined us. Together, we are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/FkPNNVpccX
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2018
Just a friendly reminder that Trump criticized President Barack Obama in 2012 for hitting the campaign trail weeks after Hurricane Sandy.
Six years later, Trump didn’t even spend an hour pretending to care about the impending gulf coast disaster. He jumped right onto the campaign trail, where he attacked Democrats and trashed the ‘Me Too’ movement.
No president mismanages hurricanes quite like Trump
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it would have been hard to imagine any future president bungling a federal response to a massive storm as badly as George W. Bush did 13 years ago.
But Trump hasn’t just risen the occasion to be a far worse leader during natural disasters; he also seems to be okay with his compassionless incompetence. In fact, he has dropped any effort to even pretend to care about these deadly storms.
What’s worse is that Wednesday’s decision by Trump to hold a ritzy fundraiser and political rally in Pennsylvania – and then go on to brag about the crowd size – is only the latest example of this president’s total abdication of leadership in times of crisis.
His neglect of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria led to the deaths of thousands of Americans. To this day, the president doesn’t even acknowledge the number of fatalities and has written it off as a Democratic hoax.
When Trump brags about “no president” being able to do some of the things he has done during his time in office, he is – in this case – correct. There has never been an American leader of either party so incapable and unwilling to do his job following natural disasters.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
