[imagesource: Kevin Lamarque / Reuters]

There’s a very good chance Donald Trump will run for the 2024 presidency.

There’s likely a solid chance he wins, too, which tells you everything you need to know about the state of public discourse in the US.

No matter what he says or does, or what emerges about what he did or said during his time as president, millions will still vote for him.

The latest round of embarrassing stories comes via a trio of former senior officials, who recount the time that Trump asked if China could be manufacturing hurricanes and sending them to damage the US.

Here’s The Guardian:

Trump also reportedly wanted to know if using such a “hurricane gun” would constitute an act of war, and if so, whether the US could retaliate militarily…

“It was almost too stupid for words,” one source told the magazine, which said the speaker was “intimately familiar with the then sitting president’s inquiry”.

“I did not get the sense he was joking at all,” the source added.

Hurricane-related matters have never been his strong suit. Remember when he altered a hurricane map back in 2019 because he made an incorrect prediction about where it would strike?

Observe the additional bulge on the top of the actual map, which was an attempt to justify Trump’s previous baseless claim that Alabama could be affected:

China has in the past attempted to modify weather to aid agricultural regions, or improve major events such as the Olympics, but using them to attack another country is not something that foreign leaders have bothered to look into.

Back to Trump’s weaponised hurricanes probe:

…a second former official [was quoted] as saying: “I was present [once] when he asked if China ‘made’ hurricanes to send to us. [Trump] wanted to know if the technology existed. One guy in the room responded, ‘Not to the best of my knowledge, sir.’

“I kept it together until I got back to my office … I do not know where the [then-]president would have heard about that … He was asking about it around the time, maybe a little before, he asked people about nuking hurricanes.”

There were also claims in 2019 that Trump asked about whether large storms could be destroyed using nuclear weapons.

Stephanie Grisham, his press secretary, said these strange outbursts were par for the course:

“Stuff like that was not unusual for him,” Grisham said. “He would blurt out crazy things all the time, and tell aides to look into it or do something about it.”

“His staff would say they’d look into, knowing that more often than not, he’d forget about it quickly – much like a toddler.”

That tallies with what many former officials who have gone on the record have said after leaving the White House.

Can you believe it’s likely going to be Joe Biden or Trump running the show for another four years from 2024 onwards?

[source:guardian]