Unmasking Trump’s Habit of Spreading Misinformation during Natural Disaster Reactions

Throughout his tenure as the American president, Donald J. Trump regularly disseminated misinformation during numerous natural disaster responses. His misleading assertions appeared to be an attempt to deflect blame from the shortcomings of his administration’s disaster response. This article seeks to break down a few notable instances of Trump spreading misinformation during moments of crisis, specifically with regards to natural disasters. One prominent example of Trump’s knack for spreading misinformation was evident during the destructive wildfire season that crippled California in 2018. Despite expert opinion and thousand-page climate change reports stating otherwise, Trump blamed California’s wildfires on poor forest management, asserting that Finland managed to eliminate such disasters by spending a lot of time raking and cleaning their forests. Finnish officials and environmental experts issued statements countering this claim noting that Finland’s colder, moister climate and differently composed forests in no way compared to California’s conditions. Another notorious example came on the heels of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017. Following this disastrous event, Trump was heavily criticized for his administration’s slow and inefficient response. In an attempt to deflect the backlash, he asserted that the hurricane caused 6 to 18 deaths instead of the estimated 3,000. His figure drastically undervalued the number of deaths from researchers, who used a scientifically-backed methodology over months of analysis to estimate the toll of 2,975 excess deaths due to the hurricane. In 2019, as Hurricane Dorian threatened the southeastern coast of the United States, Trump inaccurately claimed that the state of Alabama was in the path of the storm. However, professionals from the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center instantly dismissed Trump’s claim. Even though the president presented a doctored weather map to authenticate his claims, records showed that Alabama had not been a part of any of the official projections regarding Hurricane Dorian’s path. Yet another instance of misinformation was evident during Hurricane Harvey’s onslaught that had ravaged Texas in 2017. In contrast to facts and figures, Trump exaggeratedly stated that the hurricane was the biggest and the most catastrophic in the history of the country. However, according to the National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Harvey was categorized as a Category 4 storm and there have been a number of storms in U.S. history that have been more intense. The instances mentioned clearly depict a pattern of misinformation, fueled by Trump’s eagerness to either deflect criticism or overstate the situation to outshine his predecessors. Despite the hazardous consequences of such misleading communication during disasters,