Get Ready to Hear From the President at 2:18 This Afternoon

This is only my opinion, and not the representation of Saintel Daily, LLP.

Regardless of who you are, what political party you support or how much you like the President of the United States, if you have an American cell phone and you are in the United States today, you will hear from him.  This afternoon at 2:18 PM, FEMA is going to be sending out a “Presidential Alert”.  This is to test their Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, acronym IPAWS.  While I have absolutely no issues getting alerts from FEMA or any other agency who wants to tell me about a disaster, but this is different.  This is the President using his power and ultimately, control, to be able to tell America whatever he wants to tell them.  Don’t we have enough problems with his use of Twitter?

I mean, you can block him on Twitter, or just ignore him altogether, but if he’s sending out a text message to your phone, shouldn’t we also have the ability to block it?  And it’s not like he has anything important to say.  I mean, he’s kind of like the boy who cried wolf a little bit.  All we ever see is him sending out tweets. And now it feels like he’s finding a new way to harass the American people.

As I’ve indicated, these alerts are extremely important for things like weather, flood warnings or even an Amber Alert.  Which, I’m sure we’ve all received, but this is something completely different.  Instead of identifying a specific area of what’s going on in your area, this is going to give everyone and their brother a direct message from the President.  This system is supposed to be a way for the White House to notify everyone in America of an emergency, but why is the President sending this out?  Why isn’t some other agency?

Further, and what might be the worst is that there is no way to opt out of the message! I mean if that isn’t hubris, I don’t know what is. I mean, there is no other aspect of my life where I don’t have the ability to block something out.  If my boss is ragging on me about something, I can block him out.  Sure, I might jeopardize my employment, but it’s my decision to do so.  Trump is taking that decision away from all of us.  Much in the same way that he’s been taking decisions away from a lot of people over the last two years.  When will it end?

Along with today’s message from Trump, which might be a repeat of Covfeve, we will also receive a message from FEMA who is testing out their Emergency Alert System.  As I’ve indicated, we don’t know what Trump will send, but we do know what FEMA is going to say:

THIS IS A TEST of the National Emergency Alert System. This system was developed by broadcast and cable operators in voluntary cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, and local authorities to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency an official message would have followed the tone alert you heard at the start of this message. A similar wireless emergency alert test message has been sent to all cell phones nationwide. Some cell phones will receive the message; others will not. No action is required.”