Hurricanes and Donald Trump, Both Deadly
There is still time to avoid the disaster of a second Trump presidency
Let’s set aside the nasty exchanges between Democrats and Republicans about the lies Trump is telling about President Biden’s response to Hurricane Helene. The administration has responded appropriately. And, with Hurricane Milton about to pound the Southwest coast of Florida, the president is responding again. Trump is accomplishing nothing by spreading misinformation about the weather.
But what if you have friends and family in Tampa, Florida? Let’s say you are in Virginia or Maryland. It is too late to go down there and offer to help. And even if you made the trip, what help can you offer other than helping people get out of the area and perhaps saving a few items from homes that likely will be flooded in 48 hours?
As I reflected on the helplessness of watching the approaching hurricane on TV, I thought about the inevitability of the disaster. A hurricane is not like a plane crash, an event that usually offers no advance warning. It just happens. It is not even like an earthquake, where areas now get a few hours of advance notice, but usually not enough to get out of the way. Hurricanes offer two or more days of warnings. People in harm’s way who act on the warnings typically do not die.
The 2024 election is, in some ways, like a deadly hurricane. We are now less than 30 days from election day. We know that a disaster--Trump winning--could happen. We still have time to do something about it.
And unlike a hurricane, where advance notice of a coming disaster provides limited opportunities to avert disaster, elections provide one huge opportunity to avoid disaster altogether. If voters analyze the consequences of the election of the wrong candidate—that would be Donald Trump—and vote, Trump can be defeated.
If Trump is defeated by a healthy margin, he will be ugly for a few days and then drift into the back pages of history. He will spend the end of his days combatting the criminal charges he hopes to avoid if he wins. He will face financial ruin, in part because the market for Trump-branded products will disappear overnight.
Trump in some ways is a hurricane—a deadly one. He promises retribution against his enemies but has not defined who he puts in that category. We know he wants to put Biden and Harris in jail, or in an insane asylum (are there still things in existence called insane asylums?), but what if he expands his retribution to go after transgender women who compete in women’s sports, or people who posted disparaging comments or cartoons about Trump on social media? Then things could get really ugly.
Hurricane Milton is going to kill people and cost taxpayers billions of dollars in recovery efforts. Nothing can be done to stop Milton. The same is not true about Donald Trump. There is still time to defeat him.