“HURRICANE GUN”: New report details Trump’s craziest question for his aides while in office
Donald Trump’s intelligence and mental acuity have never been seen as particularly abundant, but a new report from Rolling Stone magazine shows that even that relatively generous assessment of his IQ may have understated just how broken the disgraced former president’s brain may truly be.
According to Asawin Suebsaeng and Adma Rawnsley of the pop culture magazine, Trump persistently asked an astonishing question during his first year in office— was China in possession of a secret weapon that could create hurricanes and aim them at the United States?
Yes, you read that right. Donald Trump — the man who believes that climate change is a hoax, also thinks that Chinese scientists have enough mastery of climate science to summon and direct massive storm systems at their beck and call…and to their military and economic advantage.
Trump was so convinced of this possibility that he followed up his interrogation of intelligence officials on the subject with questions aimed at the White House legal staff, namely that if China was launching deadly weather events at the U.S., would it constitute an act of war that the United States could react to with a military response.
One could imagine the scene that would have happened at the United Nations when — after Trump’s retaliatory attack on China after the triple hit of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria in his first year in office and his aides were unable to talk him off the ledge, the U.S. ambassador to the UN was forced to explain the reasons for the sudden attack. That is if the UN building would even still be standing because the Chinese did not launch a corresponding nuclear attack on New York City.
The allegations about the stormy questions in the Rolling Stone article are attributed to “two former senior administration officials and a third person briefed on the matter.”
One of those unnamed officials confirmed that Trump’s queries were not jokes, just as he was serious when he altered a map of one hurricane’s path with a Sharpie to make one of his tweets seem less inaccurate.
“It was almost too stupid for words,” the official said. “I did not get the sense he was joking at all.”
Trump was serious enough in his questioning that he continued to ask variations of the same question until “at least 2018,” according to Rolling Stone‘s sources.
“…as Trump got deeper into the second year in his term, he started to drop the topic, and occasionally joked about it,” the sources said.
Stories of the questions circulated enough among White House staff that the entire incident became known as the “Hurricane Gun” thing.
“’I was present [once] when he asked if China ‘made’ hurricanes to send to us,’ said the other former senior official. Trump ‘wanted to know if the technology existed. One guy in the room responded, “Not to the best of my knowledge, sir.” I kept it together until I got back to my office… I do not know where the [then-]president would have heard about that… He was asking about it around the time, maybe a little before, he asked people about nuking hurricanes,‘” Rolling Stone reports.
Former Trump administration White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham had not heard about the “Hurricane Gun” story but indicated that it did “not surprise me at all.”
“Stuff like that was not unusual for him. He would blurt out crazy things all the time, and tell aides to look into it or do something about it. His staff would say they’d look into knowing that more often than not, he’d forget about it quickly — much like a toddler,” Grisham admitted.
It’s disturbing to find out that as much as the public already knew about the sheer idiocy of Donald Trump’s so-called mental processes, there are still un-retold anecdotes that prove just how dangerous it was to have a man with this kind of disordered mind acting as our president. In light of stories like this, it’s truly astonishing that any American would believe that it would be a good thing to have Trump back in the White House in 2024, instead of in the “big house.”
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Original reporting by Asawin Suebsaeng and Adma Rawnsley at Rolling Stone.
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