On Saturday morning, the people of
Hawaii got the fright of their lives after a government alert stated that everyone on the island was at immediate risk due to an incoming ballistic missile. The message said: "Emergency Alert: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
After nearly forty agonizing minutes of everyone not knowing when - or if - their final moments were about to happen, a second message went out stating that it was a false alarm.
While everyone was, of course, incredibly relieved that they were no longer heading for impending doom, many people also took it as a wake-up call about how under threat the US truly is. And one of those people was
Jim Carrey.
The actor and comedian, who was in Hawaii at the time the message was sent out, described the experience as a "psychic warning", and took it as a caution of what could be yet to come. Accompanying the tweet, perhaps somewhat insensitively, was a picture of one of Carrey's art installations: a sculpture of a mushroom cloud.
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/JimCarrey/status/952284494257508352]]
Considering this was posted at such a time of panic, the tweet was perceived by many as a scaremongering attempt or an excuse to slam Trump for something which was not his fault.
Indeed, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency has since taken full responsibility for the mistake, blaming "human error" for the false alarm. In a statement released on Saturday, they said:
"The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HI-EMA) has confirmed that there was no ballistic missile and that there were no computer hacks to the HI-EMA system. The cause of the false alarm was human error.
"HI-EMA has already taken measures to ensure that an incident such as the one that occurred this morning does not happen again. HI-EMA has also started a review of cancellation procedures to inform the public immediately if a cancellation is warranted."
But Carrey's claim that Trump is "alienating the world" was not entirely misplaced.
Just days after referring to certain nations as "s**thole countries" and being branded as a racist by the UN, the president failed to inform his own citizens that the message was a false alert. The incident happened as he was playing golf, leaving another government official - Representative Tulsi Gabbard - to tweet the first report of a false alarm to her 174,000 followers about 15 minutes after the warning was given.
President Trump, on the other hand, did not tweet about the matter at all. In fact, the first thing he posted after thousands of his own citizens were made to fear for their lives was something about the Fire and Fury book that has been troubling him for the past couple of weeks.
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/952301373479104512]]
When asked about the state's error in sending out the alert,
Trump said:
"I love that [Hawaii] took responsibility, they took total responsibility, but we're going to get involved," he said. "Their attitude and what they want to do, I think it's terrific. They took responsibility, they made a mistake."
Then, when asked what would be done to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again, he added: "Well, we hope it won't happen again, but part of it is that people are on edge, and maybe eventually we'll solve the problem and they won't have to be so on edge."
Carrey has not tweeted about Hawaii again since his first post, but continues to call out Trump and the GOP.
