By now, everybody under the sun has heard or read about the false alarm Saturday in Hawaii, in which a statewide alert warned every swinging islander and visitor that an inbound ballistic missile was only minutes away from ruining their whole day.
The fake alert terrified Hawaiians. The reasons given for how it happened lacked credibility. And of course, the liberal left jumped on the No Trump bandwagon immediately to point their unsubstantiated fingers at the sitting president, asking Trump why he continues to cultivate an erroneously perceived lack of foreign policy when it comes to rogue nation North Korea.
The more important question is: Why did it take 38 minutes for Hawaiian state authorities to send a second message stating that the alert was an error? There’s a flaw here somewhere.
And how did the fake alert happen in the first place? Hawaiian Gov. David Ige reportedly said the false alarm was “a mistake made during a standard procedure” as a work shift changed, “and an employee pushed the wrong button.”
Seriously? One guy low in the food chain, with no consultation from higher-ups, can push an unsecured button that lights up the whole state in case of an impending nuclear attack? Might as well say the janitor did it, with his finger, in the pie room. Call it flaw No. 2.
In Washington, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, told CNN that the fake alert in Hawaii shows President Trump’s policy on North Korea is wrong.
“What makes me angry is that yes, this false alarm went out, and we have to fix that in Hawaii,” Gabbard said. “But really, we’ve got to get to the underlying issue here of why are the people of Hawaii and the United States facing a nuclear threat coming from North Korea? And what is this president doing, urgently, to eliminate that threat?”
Gabbard is a military veteran who serves on the U.S. House armed services and foreign affairs committees. As such, she should know better – North Korea doesn’t listen to the United States. The Kim Jong-un regime is beholden to and supported by China, Iran and Russia.
“I’ve been calling on President Trump to negotiate directly with North Korea,” Gabbard said, “to sit across the table from Kim Jong-un, work out the differences so that we can build a pathway towards [sic] denuclearization to remove this threat.”
Well, it takes two to tango. Trump could offer to sit down until he was blue in the face. But there are no talks possible so long as the chair across the table from him is empty.
Gabbard adds that no preconditions should precede such talks — meaning North Korea should not have to give up its nuclear weapons first. Moreover, she says, Trump should assure Pyongyang that Washington is not pursuing regime change in North Korea.
Can Gabbard be that naïve? Guess so. Guess she never heard of Neville Chamberlain. Perhaps she slept through her world-history classes. .
And what is President Trump doing to “eliminate the threat”? Plenty. The missile silos in Alaska and on the continental West Coast are armed and ready. Anti-missile defenses in Japan are pointed in the right direction. And the U.S. Navy has a small armada on and under the Sea of Japan and in the Pacific Ocean to deal with the wishes of Kim Jong-un. In other words, Rocket Man ought to be careful what he wishes for.
Meanwhile, the “deplorables” on the political left — yes, Hilary, some of those on your side of the fence are Democratic deplorables — lit up like the Fourth of July.
Keith Boykin of CNN complained that Trump was on a golf course in Florida while the fake alert was unfolding. “Of course he was,” Boykin said facetiously, without referring to any of the times when Trump’s predecessor was on the links driving and putting while seriously dire events occurred elsewhere. But the discerning public, along with the populace in Hawaii, weren’t laughing at Boykin’s fake humor.
Fake actress Jamie Lee Curtis put the cherry on the pudding. In her tweet, she went more ballistic than the fake missile that launched statewide panic in the 50th state. Curtis wrote: “This Hawaii missile scare is on YOU Mr. Trump. The real FEAR that mothers & fathers & children felt is on YOU. It is on YOUR ARROGANCE. HUBRIS. NARCISSISM. RAGE. EGO. IMMATURITY and your UNSTABLE IDIOCY. Shame on your hate filled self. YOU DID THIS!”
Even President Obama would have disagreed, saying at one point: “We did not build this country on our own. We built it together.” His comment came during a speech about small-business entrepreneurs, denying that they built their businesses themselves. Extending the logic, can we not also point the finger at Congress for any holes in the Swiss cheese of foreign policy?
The “No Trump” left just can’t help themselves. What’s next? How about: Let’s blame President Trump for the spate of cold weather that has paralyzed half the nation? Guess Mother Nature is punishing us because Trump pulled the United States out of the planet-wide global warming accord — er, the climate-change accord … er, whatever the atmospheric political movement is being called these days.
Give us a break.