Why Hawaii's false alarm should be a massive wake-up call for us all

Is President Trump going to get us all killed?

A sign in Hawaii about a false alarm
(Image credit: Cory Lum/Civil Beat via AP)

For 38 minutes on Saturday, Hawaiians experienced the very worst sort of nightmare, after a state agency inadvertently sent out a message that a ballistic missile was inbound. "Seek shelter immediately. This is not a drill," read the terrifying alert that Hawaiians received on their phones and TVs. Distraught residents and visitors did their best to find safety and send tearful final messages to loved ones before the alert was retracted.

President Trump, who was out golfing at the time, made a minor public statement about the false alarm, calling it a "state thing" and saying he loved "that they took responsibility." He then resumed pouring kerosene on the "shithole-gate" inferno, making up childish new names for United States senators, torpedoing a bipartisan immigration bill, and blaming everything on the Democrats.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.