RUSH: Okay. So how many of you got an alert just now on the RushLimbaugh.com app saying the show was coming up? Right on! Greetings, my friends. And the notification was right because here we are, happily so, kicking off a brand-new week of broadcast excellence at 800-282-2882, and the email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.
You know, I mentioned on this program countless times that one of — you know, we all have pet peeves. And one of my biggest pet peeves is arrogant condescension. People who know less than I do who think they know more than everybody else, and they’re arrogant about it. And then they condescend, treat you like you’re an idiot, treat you like you can’t possibly know what you’re talking about.
The second — and it’s kind of related — the second pet peeve that I have is people insulting my intelligence, and it happens frequently. And we are in the midst of it right now with this explanation of what happened in Hawaii with the, “Oops, the guy hit the wrong button!” And for 34 minutes, the people of Hawaii thought they were dead. Yeah, he hit the wrong button twice.
Have any of you — don’t do this if you haven’t — have any of you on your iPhone ever had to erase the whole thing for whatever reason to start over? It’s called settings, general, reset. And there are many different things you can reset. You can reset network settings, you can reset the whole damn thing, which means that you are going to erase everything on the phone. You have to confirm that a minimum of three times.
Apple will not let you do that accidentally. And it’s an iPhone and there’s not a single nuclear code on an iPhone. All there is is your personal data. All of your passwords, your settings, whatever is on the phone, if you have to erase it, which you can do, you will get three different alerts asking you if that’s what you really intend to do, if you’re really certain about it. And there are areas like this all over the iPhone.
There is a feature that hardly anybody knows about. It’s well hidden. It happens to be one of my favorite features that Apple will not divulge anything about. It’s called significant locations. I’m not even gonna bother to tell you where it is. That’s not the point. But you can clear the location history from your phone if you want to. Your phone records, where you’ve been. I happen to think that’s marvelous and magic and great and I love it. And I use it. Other people are paranoid about it. They think Tim Cook is spying on everything they do, just like Zuckerberg spying on every Facebook user and the Twitter people — (laughing) it turns out the Twitter people are spying on you! O’Keefe has yet another video from Project Veritas.
They’re collecting everything at Twitter on you, everything, including your photos. They’re creating a sexual file of all of their users. They’re creating a data file on everybody at Twitter, by their own admission. More details on that. Anyway, if you want to clear your location. Let’s say you have effectively been made paranoid about your phone recording where you’ve been. And you find out about it, “Oh, no, I want to get rid of that.” Okay. You go into significant locations, and you tap on “clear history.”
You will have to do it three times. You’ll have to confirm that’s what you want to do three times. Just like if you want to erase the whole phone, you’ll have to confirm that three times. “Are you sure you want to?” Yes. “Are you really, really sure? This is gonna erase everything on your phone, and you can’t go back and undo this. Are you sure you want to do it?” You tap “yes.”
It comes back, “Do you really know what you’re doing here? Are you certain that you want to take this phone and make it like it’s brand-new out of the box?” And yet we’re told that on a nuclear warning test, the guy hit the wrong button twice. We’re now told the guy hasn’t been fired. He’s barely been reprimanded. We don’t know his name. He’s going to be reassigned.
Now, all of this insults my intelligence, because, folks, I simply don’t believe this. I don’t believe that there are buttons or computer keys that, you know, a drop-down menu that says nuclear test, nuclear test warning, nuclear test this. When you look what it takes to launch nuclear weapons, I don’t think very many people know that, but there’s a guy that follows the president everywhere he goes, doesn’t matter where he is, that guy is there. And he’s carrying a suitcase. It’s called the football. You’ve all heard this.
The football has the nuclear launch codes. To launch nuclear weapons, I mean, it can’t be done instantly. That’s why all this talk about a button on a desk is ridiculous, too, because that’s not how it happens. The codes change I don’t know how often, multiple times a day, every day, or what have you. The president has to authorize it, the football carrier has to authorize it, and the person receiving the codes has to go through an authorization process. And we’re told, “Ah, the guy hit the wrong button.”
I just can’t accept this, not within the context of everything that has gone on that has been originated in or perpetrated by the American left and our administrative state. The Hawaii emergency management administrator, Vern Miyagi, reported one of his employees clicked the wrong button twice, said, “It’s embarrassing, but again, it’s a mistake.”
Why hasn’t it happened before? If it’s this easy to make this kind of mistake, why hasn’t it happened before? And why did it take 34 minutes to correct this mistake? People were living in abject fear, except for one guy who kept playing golf. I like that guy. He said (paraphrasing), “Even if it’s true, I’m going out doing what I love. To hell with it. I’m not hiding in some sewer drain.” But that’s what people were doing. They were hiding their kids everywhere they could. I mean, for 34 minutes the Hawaii emergency management administration allowed abject fear to percolate in the state of Hawaii.
“Vern Miyagi, the administrator, said, that he “was supposed to select the option for a drill. Instead, he chose the real thing twice. ‘A missile may impact on land or sea within minutes. This is not a drill.'” Grab audio sound bite number 17. Here is what it sounded like…
VOICE: The U.S. Pacific Command has detected a missile threat to Hawaii. A missile may impact on land or sea within minutes. This is not a drill. If you are indoors, say indoors. If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in a building. Remain indoors well away from windows. If you are driving, pull safely to the side of the road and seek shelter in a building or lay on the floor.
RUSH: All right. Are you kidding?
VOICE: We will announce when the threat has ended.
RUSH: Come on now.
VOICE: This is not a drill. Take immediate action measures.
RUSH: There isn’t anything you could do. Folks, this is so silly. Get inside a building? This is as dumb as they told us in the fifties, “Hide under your desks, children!” There’s nothing… If you’re in a building, stay away from windows? Do you know how hot…? Hawaii would be turned 10,000 gazillion degrees! It doesn’t matter where you’re… You would vaporize. There’s nothing you could do. (interruption) Of course they were lying to us when they told us get to under the desk!
There’s no surviving a nuclear detonation. There’s no surviving a detonation if it’s a dead hit much less less intense than that. But the temperature alone, the concussion of the explosion, you would just cease to be there. Everything would just cease to be there — except the roaches. They would survive, and then Hawaii would become, you know, a hellhole. (interruption) No, no. They… (interruption) Back in the fifties… (interruption) I know. Hiding under the desk was to keep from going blind. They’re not gonna tell us to not sweat it; you’re gonna be vaporized.
My point is, is there an advantage…? Let’s look at this the other way. Remember, everything has been politicized, folks. Does it anybody benefit from this episode? (interruption) Who? Who benefits? (interruption) Let me tell you, there are people… If you watch the Late Show with Colbert, he has an ongoing routine about the world ending because of Donald Trump. Now, I received an award. I was the keynote speaker at a Media Research Center event back last fall. It was in September.
In fact, it was the night before the iPhone 8 and the 8 Plus were released. I almost told Bozell, “I can’t make it because the iPhone’s coming out the next day.” But I went, and as part of the part of the evening they show the funniest, the most outrageous, the stupidest, the dumbest, the most ridiculous video clips of Drive-By Media commentators, journalists, and analysts, and the stupid things they say, and everybody uproariously laughs.
So I watched this, and when I was introduced to speak, I said, “Folks, we all laugh at this, but there’s something you have to know: They believe it. They believe what you and I think is insane. They believe what you and I laugh at, and I’m here to tell you.” I got a note from somebody over the weekend about the bifurcation of America in terms of media. I’ve even got a couple sound bites about this today.
A friend of mine said that a friend of hers went to a dinner party last week, and most of the attendees were people that literally hate Donald Trump. And the dinner party featured two people who were Trump supporters, two or three people. It resulted in the dinner party was nothing more than a bunch of people shouting at each other, and the people that hate Trump — are you ready for this? — had never heard of Fusion GPS. They didn’t have the slightest idea what that is. They had never heard of Glenn Simpson.
They had never heard of Christopher Steele. Now, of course you and I know all of those things and people. We know who they are. We know what Fusion GPS is. They don’t. Why not? Their media does not report anything that is in any way derogatory, defamatory, or even critical of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or the Obama administration. The media today (the mainstream so-called media) is nothing but 100% Never Trump, and they embellish every paranoid fantasy and fear that the left has.
Don’t doubt me on this. There are more people in this country than you would believe who literally believe Donald Trump is going to start a nuclear war, that the earth is going to end either because of climate change or Donald Trump, whichever makes it happen first. We see this; we laugh at it. They believe it. These people have demonstrated for the past year and a half that they are entirely unglued. And I’m not talking just about average, ordinary citizens.
I’m talking about people in the Democrat Party, people in the deep state administrative state that are Obama holdovers. They are unhinged. They cannot believe Trump got elected. They think he’s the worst example of humanity they have ever seen. He’s unfit. He’s unqualified. They’re beside themselves. Many people on the so-called conservative side, the Never Trumpers, think the same way. And it’s not abstract, folks. They literally believe…
We watch all media. We read all media. We know what they’re watching. We know what they think because we expose ourselves to it. They don’t. For the most part, they don’t listen to conservative talk radio. They don’t read or consult other conservative media. They just don’t. It just makes them too uncomfortable. It makes them feel “unsafe.” They live in their protected little cocoons, and all they do is Saturday Night Live and the various leftist cable channels.
And they have an ongoing, literal fear of what is going to happen to America because of Donald Trump, because that’s what their media tells them every day. The way to try to understand this is watch CNN now and then or watch MSNBC. The most outrageous, stupid, harebrained, insane, unrealistic, paranoid things that you hear and see, they believe! So it is not hard for me to understand, not hard for me to believe that there’s some lunatic in the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency who literally believes that Donald Trump is the worst human being ever born, the worst president ever, and people need to know what he’s going to do.
I do not doubt that there is a level of unhinged insanity at the highest levels of government that you would think this kind of behavior would be weeded out and nobody would be there. They are being driven insane each and every day. As each day comes and goes and Trump survives, they become even more unglued and unhinged. So the possibility that some deranged lunatic did this on purpose to try to show people, to try to warn people, to try to give people a heads-up about what could happen out there?
I would totally believe it if this were to be discovered and reported. It would make total sense with everything else that’s happened in the past year and a half. I mean, we’re relying on a fake dossier bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton that is filled with made-up allegations, none of it corroborated. We probably have all of these investigations taking place because of it. We have probably the Trump campaign and transition team spied on by virtue of a FISA warrant using this dossier.
It wasn’t that long ago that this kind of thing, nobody would think is possible. “People are too responsible in these positions. These are very jobs in important positions in law enforcement. This is too important.” But they have been corrupted by their own hatred, by their own misery, by their own depression, the fact they can’t get rid of Trump, the fact they couldn’t beat Trump, the fact that Trump survives them every day.
It would be easier to describe the American left the last year and a half as completely, totally unhinged and insane than describe them as normal, predictable, “This is the way it’s always been.” It’s not the way it’s always been! Thirty-four minutes and he hit the wrong button twice? You can’t find probably maybe 200 conservatives in the whole state of Hawaii, except maybe for the military.
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RUSH: Oh, no. I know. I know that Drive-Bys can’t wait to tell everybody their interpretation of what I just said. I don’t care, folks. It’s worth running the risk. Look, they’ve called me a kook for, what, 25 or 30 years now. But I’ll tell you what really focused me on this is when I heard this on CNN yesterday morning…
TAPPER: I think there are a lot of people out there — and I don’t want to be flip about this. I think there are a lot of people out there who are happy that this at least didn’t happen while President Trump was watching Fox & Friends and instead it happened when he was out on the golf course and he was informed about this by layers of advisers and such. Because we know that historically, misunderstandings and false alarms have almost led to nuclear confrontation, nuclear war.
RUSH: Right. So it’s a good thing this idiot was playing golf and not watching Fox & Friends, ’cause if Trump had been watching Fox News and seen it there, he would have called the football guy in and launched on North Korea. You tell me they’re not thinking about this.
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RUSH: Yes, Mr. Snerdley, I know that they’re gonna make fun of me. That’s the best they can do. They can’t refute me. Let’s say that my theory on this is right. Do you think that the Hawaii emergency management administration would say, “Sorry. We have a Never Trump guy here who literally hates Trump. He lost his mind and he wanted to try to warn people what he thinks the president might cause.”
Of course they would never say that. Of course they’re gonna say it was a mistake, a 37-minute mistake, hit the wrong button twice. They could never say that. So it’s gonna be easy to say, “That would never happen. That would never be the case.” But, my friends, there are too many oddball, kooky things that have gone on the last year and a half, I mean, some of the deranged — like now, it’s Martin Luther King Day. And guess what? The NAALCP says you can no longer support Dr. King’s version of civil rights without also being a supporter of the belief in climate change, that climate change and Dr. King are inseparable.
Now, you want to tell me that that’s credible? You want to tell me that that’s adjusted and sane? Do you want to tell me that that makes any sense whatsoever? You want to tell me that any climate change argument they make makes any sense? Really, am I the only person who thought this is possible given what we know about the kooks on the left?
In fact, the first thing I thought when I heard about this false nuke alarm thing, before I even knew the details, when all I knew was that it was a false nuke alarm, my first reaction, “I wonder if it’s somebody out there who wanted to give the world a glimpse of what will happen if we don’t get rid of Trump.”
These people have lost their marbles over Trump. They have lost, you know, I call it sanity. They’ve lost their grounding. Their minds are generally being chipped away by their own poisonous rage and disappointment. Wait ’til you hear this. I got this funny story about what Samantha Power did on election night. I mean, folks, these people are — I don’t know how to adequately describe this beyond, I mean, unhinged and unglued I think is perfect. That’s why I keep repeating it.
Well, how many times have you heard some leftist kook caterwaul about his or her fear that Trump is certain to start a nuclear war because he’s so stupid, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, because he’s unfit, because he’s unqualified? There is a CBS Radio promo for Colbert’s late-night CBS TV program where Colbert says, “If the world ends, Trump will be a one-term president.” Leftist comedy shows are not comedy anymore. They’re really rooted in anger and rage.
But the other thing that we learn that is kind of surprising is just what a bunch of sponges your average, ordinary American citizen leftists have become. They’re unquestioning; they’re unchallenging; they’re uncurious or incurious; they simply believe whatsoever outrageous impossibility is reported to them in the only media that they consume.
Now, I think daily, unhinged behavior requires us to be a little cynical about these people. Otherwise it was just some good, innocent soul that pressed the wrong button a couple times, right? That’s all it really was. There’s nothing to see here. Yeah. It just hasn’t happened before, but there could be explanations for that. And apparently there weren’t any fail-safes? How can that be when, as I say, you have to confirm three times you want to erase your iPhone before they will let you do it.
Right there it is: “Hawaii Says Lack of Adequate Fail-Safe Measures Led to False Missile Alert.” How can that be? How can there be a lack of adequate fail-safe measures at any stage of whatever nuclear system and programs are in place in this country? How can that be?
This is from Reuters: “Human error and a lack of adequate fail-safe measures during a civil defense warning drill led to the false missile alert that stirred panic –” You think it took ’em 37 minutes to figure out that it was a mistake? What took 37 minutes to comprehend this? Depending on where the missile was theoretically launched from, it would have hit before they got the correction out, theoretically.
Thirty-seven minutes, no fail-safe or inadequate fail-safe measures. (interruption) You can believe a lack of adequate fail-safe measures? You can believe it? You can believe that it took ’em 37 minutes to realize it was false? You mean to tell me that for 30 minutes they thought it was real? Look at this the other way. It took 37 minutes to figure — let’s give ’em two minutes to get the correction, so 35 minutes.
Let’s give ’em 35 minutes to figure out that they had made a mistake? (interruption) Okay, it’s government. How many layers did they have to go through, how many bureaucracies did they have to wake up, how many — right. And double check with this one or that one. So you’re trying to make the case that it literally could take 35 minutes to discover this was a mistake?
It’s an incoming nuclear missile! Thirty-five minutes, you want to try to make the case that it is reasonable and understandable given the level of bureaucracy, it’s understandable and reasonable it would take them 35 minutes to admit somebody made a mistake? Not reasonable, but believable, you say, on a false warning of an incoming nuclear missile.
Well, okay. Since the guy hit the wrong button twice, was there anybody monitoring the missile that was incoming? I’m just saying, was somebody monitoring the incoming missile? If it took ’em 35 minutes to figure out it wasn’t true, were they tracking the incoming missile? I mean, their procedures were working well enough to tell people to hide in the sewer drains. Their proceedures are working well enough to tell people to get their kids in buildings and away from glass.
So did they call over to the Big Island at Mauna Kea and say, “On your satellites and warning systems, is there a missile coming?” And everybody assumes it’s North Korea, right? Where was the missile? How long did it take ’em to track the missile and find out it wasn’t there? And when they couldn’t find the missile, did they say, “Wow, it must be stealth”? When they couldn’t find the missile, did they still believe it was there? Thirty-five minutes.
Here is Tulsi Gabbard, who is a House member from Hawaii that was on with George Soros on ABC This Week. Question: “Do you believe Trump should be speaking directly to the leader of North Korea?” Do you think this is just coincidental? We have a false, phony warning, and within minutes we’ve got a House member from Hawaii being asked if Trump ought to get on the phone and call Kim Jong-un right now. You really want to tell me that this is how — and this is the first thing they thought of when they discovered there was no incoming missile, it was a false alarm because of a button hit wrong twice, we need to Trump to get on the phone to Kim Jong.
Why? Because Trump is the problem? Remember when Reagan was president — do not doubt me on this — when Reagan was president, the American left believed he was gonna end the world. They believed he was irresponsible. He was a cowboy. He made jokes about the evil empire and the bombing starting in five minutes, and that drove them battily insane.
And so when Mikhail Gorbachev came to the United States, he came to Washington 1986 for a summit with Reagan, the American left had a gigantic sigh of relief, because the savior of the world was finally coming to stop Reagan from hitting the nuclear button. They thought Reagan wanted to destroy the Soviet Union, Reagan wanted to start nuclear war.
Gorbachev was the savior. That’s why I coined the term “Gorbasms” to describe what they experienced, the American left, when Gorbachev arrived, got off the plane at Joint Base Andrews. Back then it was known as Andrews Air Force Base. But the same thing, folks. They thought Reagan was gonna nuke everything. And it was Mikhail Gorbachev of the deadly and murderous Soviet Union who was gonna save the world from Ronald Reagan.
And now Tulsi Gabbard wants Trump to get on the phone with Kim Jong-un so that Kim Jong-un can talk Trump out of it? Let’s see. Let’s listen to what she says. The question again: “You think Trump should be speaking directly to the leader of North Korea?”
GABBARD: Absolutely and immediately. This is something that I’ve been calling for for a long time. I’ve been talking about the seriousness of this threat posed to the people of Hawaii and this country coming from North Korea. The people of Hawaii are paying the price now for decades of failed leadership in this country.
RUSH: Who might she be talking about? “Decades of failed leadership”? Who was it that kicked the North Korea can down the road just like the budget is kicked down the road? That would be Bill Clinton. That would be Madeleine “Madam” Albright. That’d be Barack Hussein Obama. That’d be everybody but Trump. Trump is the only one dealing with this lunatic in ways the lunatic can understand.
I’m telling you, Trump is president when Kim Jong-un wants to start talking to the South Koreans? That didn’t happen during the precious presidency of Clinton. That didn’t happen during the enlightenment days of Barack Hussein O. Now the pope’s even out there! “The Pope Warns the World Is One Step Away from Nuclear War.” The world isn’t any closer to nuclear war than it was Friday, and yet we have a mistaken warning for 37 minutes.
It was untrue. There was no incoming missile. Yet now everybody’s (panting), “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, oh, oh! We’re… We’re so close to nuclear war!” We’re no closer than we were last week, last month. What happened in Hawaii doesn’t put us any closer to anything other than something’s really out of whack in the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. That’s about it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I erred, ladies and gentlemen. Tulsi Gabbard is not a senator from Hawaii. Yeah, she’s a member of the House of Representatives. Right. (interruption) What? Yeah, I’ve seen pictures of her. Yeah. That’s why I thought she was a senator. At any rate, she’s a member of the House. I just wanted to correct that.
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RUSH: Ray, Colorado Springs we head to the phones. How you doing, Ray? Great to have you here.
CALLER: I’m doing great, sir. Thanks. Nice to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Hey, I was just wanting to comment on the mistake on the alert for Hawaii. I’ve heard something about that they were doing a planned exercise and that’s how the mistake even occurred.
RUSH: Where did you hear that and when did you hear that?
CALLER: I heard that earlier this morning, and I believe it was on Fox or another show.
RUSH: Oh, you mean after the fact we’re now being told that they were going to do a test of the system? Okay.
CALLER: Well, you would think, then, most agencies would be prepared for a test that was gonna be. If that was the case, wouldn’t you think most people would know they were gonna have a test and even the higher up people would know they’re gonna have a test within the emergency system?
RUSH: Like Mr. Snerdley said, “There’s a bureaucracy. You cannot believe automatically the left hand is knowing what the right hand is doing, except in the Clinton White House.”
CALLER: Huh. Yeah, it just floors me it would take 37 minutes if they were having a planned test.
RUSH: That’s exactly right, 37 minutes. If somebody knew… By the way, I’ve also just been informed that it was announced on Twitter that it was a mistake in 12 minutes but that the system-wide alert to people’s phones didn’t happen for 37 minutes. But it was out there on Twitter in 12 minutes. So how do you explain that, Ray?
CALLER: (chuckles) I have no idea. I have no idea. Like I said, you would think that from the top down… Like, on the local exercises where they’re gonna conduct a crash at the airport or one of those deals, they let all the news agencies know ahead of time so not everybody gets all up in arms.
RUSH: That’s a good point. If it was a known test, somebody would know to say something to stop the panic and the fear. Thirty-five minutes thinking that you’re done, that you are literal toast. Thirty-five minutes! “There’s an incoming nuke.” Thirty-five minutes. And I don’t just pull these theories out of whole cloth or thin air. There’s a context for this, and some of the deranged beliefs and allegations that have come out of the deep state.
And I’m fully aware of the fully (snorts) impossible-to-categorize hatred for Trump and the dangerous mind-set that some of these people have. It’s not hard for me to believe that some deranged wacko did this in what his or her mind altruistic reasons. “The country has to be warned! The people have to be warned! This guy’s gonna start a nuclear war! I saw it on Colbert! I knew it was gonna happen! It’s so bad.”
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RUSH: The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency tweeted out 12 minutes after the threat was issued, quote, “No missile threat to Hawaii.” They tweeted that out 12 minutes after the error. But the general public still didn’t get it for 37 minutes.
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RUSH: So the mistake was corrected by government agencies on Twitter 12 minutes after the warning went out in Hawaii. But it took 37 minutes for another phone alert to be issued confirming to residents that it was a false alarm, and some residents say they never received a second phone alert. They got the original alert that there was a missile incoming and to hide the women and children, and then the emergency management people in Hawaii tweeted 12 minutes later (paraphrased): “Hey, hey, hey! It’s nothing here. It’s a false alarm. Don’t worry about it.” But a lot of people claim they never got the second alert advising them that it was a false alarm. Some people are claiming that.
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RUSH: Holy cow! They just released an iPhone video from Hawaii on Saturday, and it shows mothers opening storm drain covers and their kids going down the storm drains. The wrong button? CNN has a headline: “Trump’s MLK Jr. Day Schedule Devoid of Community Service Plans.” What, you mean Trump’s not out on a highway picking up trash? Yeah, it’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Trump is not out doing any community service.
Fox News just published a story on their Insider website. It’s a good point. Headline: “Former Green Beret Commander: ‘Hard to Believe’ Hawaii Missile Alert Could Be Sent by One Person.” In a way, this was the point I was making when I talked about what it takes to launch a nuclear weapon. The guy carrying the football, the launch codes, is always with the president. It’s a suitcase. They call it the football, and this guy is always where the president is.
That football is where the president is. Even when he’s playing golf, that football is there, and the guy carrying it is there to launch nuclear weapons, and even this is secure. I mean, there are people that know. But the exact procedure is classified. But Trump just can’t push a button. I mean, he has the authority, but the codes are changed; they’re in that football. The codes get sent to the silos. The people at the silos have to go through an authentication process to determine that it’s actually coming from the president, from the football, and there are confirmations back and forth.
It’s not an instantaneous thing. And this “former U.S. Army Green Beret commander expressed his disbelief at the claim by Hawaii officials that one person’s error caused Saturday’s statewide alert about an incoming missile. … Lt. Col. Michael Waltz (Ret.) said it’s ‘unbelievable’ that such a system existed in Hawaii. ‘I find it hard to believe that this system was developed where one individual could hit one button and send that type of alert without any secondary or third level of authorization,’ said Waltz…”
Bingo! Absolutely! And to do it twice? I’m just gonna repeat. Are you telling me…? You know, folks, when you have to erase your iPhone, if you’ve ever had to — or if you ever have to and you haven’t done it yet — you tap on “Erase All Data and Content.” You have to tap it three times. Apple has built into the software three fail-safes. You have to commit to doing it three times to make sure you know what you’re doing. And at every alert, they tell you (paraphrased):
“You’re about to wipe this baby clean. You are about to erase everything — your pictures, everything on this phone — is that what you want to do?” You hit “yes;” it asks you again. You hit “yes;” it asks you a third time. We’re to believe that in Hawaii, to send out a legitimate incoming missile alert just takes one guy hitting the wrong button? I’m sorry. Like the Green Beret guy, it doesn’t wash with me.