It was inevitable that the President of the United States would greet the onrushing disaster of a Category 4 hurricane with the same level of gravitas that he did the 17th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Unfortunately, the level is not high.

Here is Donald Trump, American president, discussing Hurricane Florence—set to slam into the East Coast between South Carolina and Virginia sometime Thursday—and the federal government's readiness to deal with it:

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TRUMP sounds the alarm about Hurricane Florence during Oval Office press availability: "They haven't seen anything like what's coming at us in 25, 30 years, maybe ever. It's tremendously big and tremendously wet." pic.twitter.com/p5YljZK8oL — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 11, 2018

It was close to three years ago now that The Boston Globe analyzed Trump's speech patterns—along with those of 18 other then-presidential candidates—and found he was speaking at a fourth-grade level. It doesn't appear he's spent much time with Merriam or Webster in the time since, as any time he went off-script—as he does obsessively—he offered a child's assessment of the situation. "Tremendously big and tremendously wet." Also, tremendously dumb.

It was reminiscent of one of his initial takes on the recovery effort in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria:

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Jesus. No wonder he had the giant brass ones to go on record today saying this about his administration's work in Puerto Rico:

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Trump calls FEMA response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico an "incredible, unsung success."



"I think in a certain way, the best job we did was Puerto Rico, but nobody would understand that."The storm killed nearly 3,000 people and left the island dilapidated for months. pic.twitter.com/4qbDmVDYt6 — Brandon Wall (@Walldo) September 11, 2018

He got one thing right: it was unsung. It's just that, according to the newest and best available data, nearly 3,000 Americans died. That's a disaster on the scale of the attacks we're commemorating today. Much of the island was without power for weeks or months. It remains in severe economic and humanitarian crisis. It deserved to be unsung. Calling this an incredible success—and blaming the island's infrastructure in a vacuum—is an insult. But what did you expect from the Paper Towel Jump Shooter?

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Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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