Tapper: People Glad Trump on Golf Course and Not Watching Fox & Friends During Hawaii False Alarm
For a (not so) brief time yesterday, the state of Hawaii was absolutely freaking out after an emergency alert was sent across the state indicating a ballistic missile would be hitting the area shortly. Following the false alarm — one that specifically said it wasn’t a drill — it took an astonishing 38 minutes for a follow-up alert to be sent telling state residents that there was no missile threat.
Speaking to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) about the false alert on today’s broadcast of State of the Union, CNN’s Jake Tapper highlighted that the president was playing golf during the incident. And he suggested that there are many Americans who are glad that he was occupied at the time and surrounded by advisers rather than watching cable news.
“I think there are a lot of people out there, and I don’t want to be flip about this, I think there are a lot of people out there who are happy that this at least didn’t happen while President Trump was watching Fox & Friends and instead it happened when he was out on the golf course and he was informed about this by layers of advisers and such. Because we know that historically, misunderstandings and false alarms have almost led to nuclear confrontation, nuclear war. Are you at all worried about the fact that an accident, a misunderstanding might lead to something like this?”
Gabbard responded by noting that the false alarm “really highlights the global consequence of what Hawaii just went through” while Gabbard that there needs to be an understanding of what is at stake. “It’s not just the president making a decision to launch a nuclear weapon; it’s these kinds of mistakes that we have seen happen in the past, that bring us to this brink of nuclear war, that could be unintentional,” she added.
In the wake of the false alarm, the president has not personally weighed in, instead tweeting about Micheal Wolff’s book, the Wall Street Journal and DACA. Meanwhile, the only statement from the White House falsely attributed the erroneous alert to a “state exercise.”
Watch the clip above, via CNN.
[image via screengrab]
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