A clearer picture is emerging as to what happened when Donald Trump refused to admit he was wrong about tweeting Alabama was in danger from Hurricane Dorian. Instead of admitting he made a mistake, Trump gave his staff a double-down directive. The Washington Post reports:
President Trump told his staff that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration needed to deal with a tweet that seemed to contradict his statement that Hurricane Dorian posed a significant threat to Alabama as of Sept. 1, in contrast to what the agency’s forecasters were predicting at the time, senior administration officials said. This led chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to call Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to tell him to fix the issue, the officials said.
The New York Times backs up that reporting, adding that:
In pressing NOAA’s acting administrator to take action, Mr. Ross warned that top employees at the agency could be fired if the situation was not addressed, The New York Times previously reported. Mr. Ross’s spokesman has denied that he threatened to fire anyone, and a senior administration official on Wednesday said Mr. Mulvaney did not tell the commerce secretary to make such a threat.
But Wednesday afternoon Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) said she believes Mulvaney should lose his job over this:
“Mulvaney is very much oriented to protecting the president being a yes person to the president at every turn… I renew my call for him to resign.”