A hurricane’s path may seem erratic at times, but modern forecasting has turned the chaos of weather into data, patterns, probabilities. No such technology exists to forecast what President Trump is going to do.
While he cannot control the weather, Trump can create pressure systems in his natural habitat: Twitter. Over the course of one Scaramucci (about 10 days), as Hurricane Dorian churned through the Atlantic , a metaphysical storm gathered force, with the president at the center. It swept up all sorts of people who weren’t in Dorian’s path: meteorologists in Alabama, politicians from Texas and Tennessee, even a Baptist pastor in Kentucky.
The hurricane destroyed homes and claimed lives. The deluge of presidential tweets caused a different kind of chaos — superficial to some, serious to others. We compiled an oral history of the two storms. Not everyone went fully on the record, and the White House ignored multiple requests to comment.