The Marker of an Authoritarian

In retrospect, perhaps the nation should have seen President Donald Trump’s spat with the weather report coming. He began his presidency not only by lying about the crowd size at his inauguration but also about the rain: Speaking before the CIA, he announced that the sky had immediately cleared of rain when he began his inaugural address, when in fact it had sprinkled steadily throughout the speech. So his refusal to let go of a misleading tweet stating that Hurricane Dorian would affect Alabama—a saga that has expanded to include numerous tweets, a defaced map, and reportedly, threats by a Cabinet official to fire staffers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—is less than surprising.

It’s difficult to say anything profound about these events, precisely because the incident itself is so absurd. To take it seriously is to prolong it, and the president’s raging is so bizarre that giving the matter new life