Trump denied that the White House pressured National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) into falsely issuing a statement that National Weather Service (NWS) was wrong in its Hurricane Dorian forecast. He told reporters today: “No I never did that. 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 when they talk about Alabama. That’s just fake news … it’s a fake story.”
Both The New York Times and The Washington Post report that Trump told his staff to get NOAA to fix the NWS forecast tweet. Sources have also revealed that Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, to have NOAA publicly disavow the accurate forecast. Wilbur Ross was allegedly met with initial resistance from acting NOAA administrator, Neil Jacobs, and Ross then issued threats of firings if Jacobs did not comply.
The Commerce Department and The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology have opened their own investigations, in addition to NOAA’s investigation into the matter of putting politics above scientific integrity.
Submitted by, salticidae