WaPo: Rush Limbaughs dangerous suggestion that Hurricane Irma is fake news [View all]

[TomCADem]

Rush Limbaugh is suggesting that Hurricane Irma is fake news, and Alex Jones is claiming that Hurricane Harvey was caused by the same "deep state" that is out torpedo Trump based on his Russia ties. How long before we start getting Hurricane truthers arguing that the hurricanes are an elaborate false flag operation?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/06/rush-limbaughs-dangerous-suggestion-that-hurricane-irma-is-fake-news/?utm_term=.4a520511eedc

More broadly, Limbaugh's bad advice reveals the metastasizing nature of “fake news” attacks on the press, which have been led by President Trump. How did we get from Trump's claim that he has “never seen more dishonest media than, frankly, the political media” to the idea that weather reports are phony, too?

Alex Jones might have something to do with it. The Infowars founder — who has an “amazing” reputation, according to Trump — has for years promoted the notion that the U.S. government possesses the power to conjure and control weather events. Just last week, as Hurricane Harvey battered Texas, Jones devoted part of his show to questioning why the government didn't “use the technologies to kill [the storm] out in the gulf.”

“It is weird how these storms go,” he said, suggesting Harvey might have been manufactured or manipulated. “They just sit over a city.”

Jones's contention is that the government — or, more precisely, the “deep state,” now that Trump is president — uses its “weather weapon” to stoke fear of climate change and promote a liberal agenda.