Sharpiegate may seem silly, but it illustrates exactly how Trump has destroyed government integrity

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Pity the poor dweller in Donald Trump’s Washington. Whether it’s in the White House, the military, or any federal agency, at any moment, Trump can intrude into your area of expertise, say the most foolish thing imaginable, then walk away. Those left holding the ruins of science, knowledge, and reason are faced with the task of trying to find some way to inform the public … without ever appearing to contradict the utterly wrong things Trump has said. 

And so, here we are again at Sharpiegate, the story where Trump was so unwilling to admit a mistake, and so insistent that reality bend to his will, that he demonstrated his decidedly un-Jedi powers by crudely altering the predicted path of a hurricane using a black marker. In an America where 135,000 people are dead from Trump’s current and ongoing mistake, the fact that Trump’s ego didn’t permit him to admit even the smallest error is no surprise, and it may seem like time to put this particular nonsense in the rear view. Except that the White House is still blocking the release of a report related to the incident, the head of NOAA violated ethics agreements in his efforts to please Trump, and the agency actually allowed false information to reach the public. Meanwhile, those within the agency that followed both ethical and scientific guidelines, put their careers on the line to defend the truth.

Trump’s including Alabama in a list of states threatened by Hurricane Dorian is, and was, just an artifact of Trump not closely following updates on the dangerous storm and repeating information that was several days out of date. It’s literally something that he could have made go away with the simplest of admissions. But, just as we’re being reminded daily in the COVID-19 crisis, Trump can never, ever, ever, never admit even the slightest mistake. So instead, Trump gave an update on the storm in which the potential path of Dorian had been crudely and ludicrously extended to make Trump “right.”

Even then it would have been nothing. However, when actual members of the Weather Service tried to inform the nation of the areas actually threatened by the storm, they were silenced. More than that, NOAA leadership sent out a statement criticizing the forecasters for providing clear, and absolutely accurate, information.

As The New York Times is now reporting, those scientists and officials received clear notice that their jobs were on the line if they didn’t shut up and go along. The inspector general’s report, still buried thanks to pressure by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, shows that Ross put pressure on the agency to “close the gap” between Trump’s statement and the predictions coming from the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Alabama. The problem, of course, was that one side of the gap was the truth and the other side was a mistake. In telling people to close the gap, those inside the agency read it as a directive to lie. Or else.

The end result was that acting administrator of NOAA Dr. Neil Jacobs ended up lying in a way that not only provided false information, but attacked NWS Birmingham forecasters for trying to provide the correct information. Because Jacobs was leaned on by Ross. And Ross was determined to make Trump “right.” And that was Sharpiegate. It sounds like a trivial thing. In some ways, it certainly was trivial. And Trump’s taking to a weather service map with a heavy black marker was so silly it was hilarious. But Sharpiegate is exactly what is happening right now, to the tune of tens of thousands of lives.

The National Weather Service was willing to put out false and misleading information, rather than cross Trump, because they feared that if they didn’t do so, their jobs were on the line. In an ideal world, this might be a “Spartacus moment” in which everyone in the chain of command refused to obey and stood up for scientific accuracy. That didn’t happen.

And that’s exactly what’s happening now at the FDA as Donald Trump continues to hype drugs that do more harm than good in the treatment of COVID-19. It’s what’s happening at the CDC as Trump insists on reopening America. It’s what’s happening in state governments where Trump and Trump-supporting governors are pushing for numbers to be altered and outcomes hidden.

Sharpiegate is about the point at which people, fearful for their jobs and terrified of their bosses, make a compromise between telling the truth, and telling what Trump wants to hear. That might not have had a great cost when it comes to Hurricane Dorian. But what it’s costing us now is inestimable.

Sharpiegate may seem silly, but it illustrates exactly how Trump has destroyed government integrity 1