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Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaks ahead of the arrival of Donald Trump during a campaign rally at the Johnny Mercer Theatre on September 24, 2024, in Savannah, Georgia.(Brandon Bell \/ Getty Images)<\/span><\/h5>\nFirst, they tried to claim that FEMA was\u00a0a deep-state ideological op<\/a>, and that didn\u2019t work. So then, the hard-core MAGA-ratchiks moved on to the real center of action for the omnipotent cabal pushing American history leftward: control of the weather. Taking the lead of that reliable arbiter of rational discourse, Georgia Representative 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 on high\u2014and from the sinister, power-grabbing left. As reeling communities in the path of Hurricane Helene started to dig out from the damage last week, Greene\u00a0repaired to her X account<\/a>\u00a0to alert her million-plus followers: \u201cYes they can control the weather. It\u2019s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can\u2019t be done.\u201d<\/p>\n Greene\u2019s demented, undocumented 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\u00a0Jewish space lasers<\/a>. (It\u2019s worth noting that the legions of weather conspiracists on the right have also taken up this ugly side of Greene\u2019s misinformation career, inundating Jewish officials involved in the Helene rescue effort with\u00a0a steady barrage of online hate<\/a>, to the point where they now fear for their safety.)<\/p>\n Yet as Hurricane Milton makes landfall in west Florida, causing a new round of devastating destruction, the weather-control thesis has moved into the white-hot center of MAGA conspiracy-mongering\u2014so much so that President Joe Biden was\u00a0forced to refute it<\/a>\u00a0in a TV interview.<\/p>\n The basic MAGA argument\u2014if you can even call it that\u2014is that the forces of liberal world domination have \u201cgeoengineered\u201d the suspiciously timed storms as yet another weapon in their vast, shape-shifting arsenal of election interference. The far-right conspiracy site Gateway Pundit\u00a0boosted Greene\u2019s claims<\/a>\u00a0with a grab-bag set of testimonials from other merchants 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. \u201cThey aggravate the problem, and sell us the solution,\u201d Kennedy breathlessly announced. \u201cThe solution they want is more social controls.\u201d<\/p>\n Other MAGA-aligned hucksters supplied the obvious connection: \u201cThey\u201d are using hurricanes to\u00a0obliterate Trump supporters<\/a>! Never mind that it\u2019s positively quaint to imagine that a power-mad, weather-modifying elite cadre of ideological scientists would harness the awesome power of hurricanes to manipulate voter turnout as opposed to, I don\u2019t know, raining terror on the country at large and anointing themselves as weather-shaping demigods. And never mind that the speculations over the great liberal storm cabal contradict last week\u2019s MAGA plaint that FEMA was doing the small-bore scut work of liberal social engineers by diverting scarce funds and resources to undeserving migrants: Are the lords of the deep state all-powerful Simon Bar Sinisters, or hapless, DEI-indoctrinated social workers?<\/p>\n But of course, consistent reasoning is hardly the point here. The point is, always and forever, to secure the standing of MAGA followers as the main characters in the byzantine conspiracies victimizing them. And in the context of the real forces creating this unprecedented wave of devastating hurricanes, the other chief objective here is to make these storms seem anything other than what they plainly are: a disastrous product of climate change.<\/p>\n Boxed out by the empirical conditions they\u2019ve proudly dismissed as a hoax, adherents of the paranoid right alight on the soothing persecution narratives endorsed by their great leader. Indeed, compared to Donald Trump\u2019s own lurid record as a weather conspiracist, Marjorie Taylor Greene is strictly a piker. As\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em>\u00a0reporters Asawin Subsaeng and Adam Rawnsley wrote in 2022, one of Trump\u2019s first acts in office was to convene national security hands and other White House aides to ask whether China was using a \u201churricane gun<\/a>\u201d 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. \u201cIt was almost too stupid for words,\u201d one former Trump official recalled. Trump\u2019s interest in this potential act of Chinese comic-book villainy came up so often that White House aides began referring to it as \u201cthe hurricane gun thing.\u201d Trump also liked to tout his own meteorological prowess, despite possessing zero understanding of how climate and weather actually work: That was how, in 2019, he infamously wound up brandishing\u00a0a Sharpie-doctored weather map<\/a>\u00a0on TV in 2019, to support his prediction that Hurricane Dorian was barreling toward the Alabama coast. (Spoiler alert: It wasn\u2019t) During that same daft hurricane season, Trump floated the idea of\u00a0attacking hurricanes with nuclear bombs<\/a>\u00a0to disperse them\u2014a proposal that manages the rare feat of being equally demented from the standpoints of meteorology and fissile weaponry.<\/p>\n It\u2019s little wonder that Trump\u2019s supporters are mimicking his high-improv weather paranoia. \u201cBiden and Harris are messing with the weather!\u201d went one typical outburst on X. \u201cHurricane Milton was sent to Florida just like the other hurricane to wipe Florida out!!\u201d (The \u201cother hurricane\u201d did its worst damage in Tennessee and North Carolina, for the record\u2014though, then again, maybe the cabal ordered up Milton pronto after Helene missed its intended target.) From the more notionally respectable perch of his million-follower X account, MAGA hedge fund manager Grant Cardone noted the rare eastbound trajectory of Milton to\u00a0ask whether they believe<\/a>\u00a0\u201cGov\u2019t is using technology to manipulate weather patterns and storms,\u201d in the same just-asking-questions rhetorical pose that JD Vance uses to promote blood libels against immigrants.<\/p>\n Other commentators have already flagged the ways in which the present battery of MAGA- branded weather delusion parallels election denialism on the right, and indeed serves as a likely\u00a0trial run<\/a>\u00a0for the torrent of lies, fraud accusations and threats of violence sure to come if Trump once more loses the election in November. That\u2019s all true enough\u2014yet, in another sense, this unhinged response to climate catastrophe isn\u2019t what you get when you deny Donald Trump the presidency; it\u2019s what you get when you successfully elect him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n