The GOP's Weather Paranoia is Geting Out of Control

First, they tried to claim that FEMA was a deep-state ideological op, but that didn’t work. So then, the hard-core MAGA-wackos moved on to another sci-fi trope: weather control. Taking the lead of that reliable arbiter of rational discourse,Marjorie Taylor Greene, they began (as Florida prepared for the landfall of Hurricane Milton) to sound the alarm that the fierce succession of destructive hurricanes battering the Southeast was all orchestrated from from the sinister, power-grabbing left. As communities in the path of Hurricane Helene started to dig out from the damage last week, Greene  spouted new nonsense on her X account:: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

Greene’s demented assertion at first seemed a sideshow to the crisis, calling to mind her infamous declaration that the 2018 wildfires in California were actually the handiwork of Jewish space lasers.  Yet as Hurricane Milton made landfall in west Florida, the weather-control hypothesis had moved into the white-hot center of MAGA conspiracy-mongering—so much so that President Joe Biden was forced to refute it in a TV interview.

The basic MAGA argument (if you can even call it that) is that the forces of liberal world domination have “geo-engineered” the suspiciously timed storms as yet another weapon in their vast, shape-shifting arsenal of election interference. The far-right conspiracy site Gateway Pundit boosted Greene’s claims with a grab-bag set of testimonials from other purveyors of paranoia. The piece highlights the findings of no less an authority than Robert Kennedy Jr., who declared that nefarious deep-state actors have seized control of the weather via the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum. “They aggravate the problem, and sell us the solution,” Kennedy breathlessly announced. “The solution they want is more social controls.”

But we're not done yet! Other MAGA-aligned hucksters supplied the obvious connection--

“They” are using hurricanes to obliterate Trump supporters!  Adherents of the paranoid right settled on the persecution rants of their great leader-- the Orange Man.

As Rolling Stone reporters Asawin Subsaeng and Adam Rawnsley wrote in 2022, one of Trump’s first acts in office was to convene national security hands and other White House aides to ask whether China was using a “hurricane gun” to precipitate adverse weather in the United States. He also wanted to know whether America should consider bombing China in retaliation for this supposed treachery. “It was almost too stupid for words,” one former Trump official recalled. Trump’s interest in this potential act of Chinese comic-book villainy came up so often that White House aides began referring to it as “the hurricane gun thing.” 

Trump also liked to tout his own meteorological prowess, despite possessing zero understanding of how climate and weather actually work: That was how he infamously wound up brandishing a Sharpie-doctored weather map on TV in 2019, to support his prediction that Hurricane Dorian was barreling toward the Alabama coast. (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t) During that same daft hurricane season, Trump floated the idea of attacking hurricanes with nuclear bombs to disperse them—a proposal that manages the rare feat of being equally moronic from the standpoints of meteorology and fissile weaponry.

So it’s little wonder that Trump’s supporters are mimicking his ad-hoc weather paranoia. “Biden and Harris are messing with the weather!” went one typical outburst on X. “Hurricane Milton was sent to Florida just like the other hurricane to wipe Florida out!!”  Never mind that the “other hurricane” wreaked  worst damage on Tennessee and North Carolina.  

Next we have MAGA hedge fund manager Grant Cardone riffing on the rare eastbound trajectory of Milton to ask whether they believe “Gov’t is using technology to manipulate weather patterns and storms,” in the same "just-asking-questions" rhetorical pose that JD Vance uses to promote blood libels against immigrants.

This deluge of MAGA-branded weather delusion is cut from the same cloth as the election denial-ism running rampant in the GOP.  But this unhinged response to climate catastrophe isn’t what you get when you deny Donald Trump the presidency; it’s what we'll get if we're stupid enough to re-elect him.