I don’t know if the gravity of the situation washed over them. If the settlement over the 60 Minutes editing job is fresh in everyone’s mind.
If somewhere, somehow, every last correspondent on the ground, including co-anchor Maurice DuBois, suddenly remembered what real reporting and journalistic integrity were.
Other networks that have been stung by Trump’s slings and retributive arrows have easily flung all objectivity and decency to the wind in the face of this disaster in favor of taking the cheap shot. In favor of drawing that first blood, however damnable the lie.
BREAKING – Months after settling a $16 million suit with President Trump, George Stephanopoulos is again spreading lies as he blames Trump for the Kerr County flash flood while citing staffing shortfalls at the NWS.
pic.twitter.com/1NtW6p1A2x— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) July 6, 2025
At this point, it’s almost become a Democratic sport – lobbing the lie grenades while dancing on children’s graves to get that soundbite, no matter who it smears along the way. ‘S’all good as long as it impacts on Trump in the end.
Democrats are leaning hard into narrative that National Weather Service in Texas botched the forecasts and warnings, leading to worse loss of life during the flood tragedy.
Schumer accuses the NWS San Antonio office of “delays, gaps, or diminished accuracy.”
Gross. pic.twitter.com/NYjj16xKo4
— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) July 8, 2025
It seems as if every usual suspect ghoul and goon has taken their cheap shot, wallowing in defamation depravity as the body count soars and hopes dim.
Almost every usual suspect.
All I can say is that last night’s CBS Evening News broadcast from the debris-strewn, tragedy-soaked banks of the Guadalupe River was a masterclass in restraint, thoughtfulness, and an honest presentation of facts on the ground. You could tell the hearts on that crew were touched, especially DuBois’s as he spoke to survivors and relatives still searching for loved ones. Janet Shamlian also did a lovely segment, which you can see here in the entire piece, along with weather dude Lonnie Quinn’s topographic explanation of what makes Kerrville the epicenter of a disaster like this.
You’ll be surprised to learn that it has nothing to do with the Trump administration.
Within that larger, longer block on the floods were two excellent segments I wanted to pull, particularly for what they don’t do – politicize any aspect of the reporting.
The first is on the warnings themselves, which has been the vicious and immediately debunked bludgeon used by the Schumer-types to defame the stellar work of the National Weather Service professionals.
FLOODING IN THE TEXAS HILL COUNTRY HERE IS COMMON, AND THERE WERE ALERTS LEADING UP TO THE 4TH OF JULY, BUT NO ONE FORESAW THE DISASTER THAT WAS COMING
The only question I had concerned the couple of lines about the NWS, which inferred they are responsible for issuing evacuation orders. That’s not within the NWS purview. The decision for those types of advisories or orders would come from local county emergency commands and public officials. Now, word of the decision and the order or advisory itself would go out on the NWS alert, but it’s not their call to make.
Texas authorities are ‘under scrutiny’ for not issuing some sort of evacuation orders, but again, no one had any idea it was going to blow up the way it did.
…An initial flood watch — which generally urges residents to be weather-aware — was issued by the local National Weather Service office at 1:18 p.m. Thursday.
It predicted between 5 to 7 inches (12.7 to 17.8 centimeters) of rain. Weather messaging from the office, including automated alerts delivered to mobile phones to people in threatened areas, grew increasingly ominous in the early morning hours of Friday, urging people to move to higher ground and evacuate flood-prone areas, said Jason Runyen, a meteorologist in the National Weather Service office.
At 4:03 a.m., the office issued an urgent warning that raised the potential of catastrophic damage and a severe threat to human life.
…Officials Say They Didn’t Expect This
Local officials have said they had not expected such an intense downpour that was the equivalent of months’ worth of rain for the area.
“We know we get rains. We know the river rises,” said Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s top elected official. “But nobody saw this coming.”
Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said he was jogging along the river early in the morning and didn’t notice any problems at 4 a.m. A little over an hour later, at 5:20 a.m., the water level had risen dramatically and “we almost weren’t able to get out of the park,” he said.
Rice also noted that the public can become desensitized to too many weather warnings.
In their defense, there are memories of the 1987 Guadalupe River flood that claimed ten lives.
And a horrific bus disaster, as another church camp tried to get their kids out, but the buses stalled in the rising river waters.
Tragedy followed.
On July 17, 1987, along the Guadalupe River near Comfort, Texas, rescuers worked to airlift teenagers trapped in trees after a wall of water washed them away.
It happened when a caravan of buses attempted to escape from a church camp through a low water crossing after an overnight storm.
When their bus stalled, they formed a human chain to try and walk out, only to have a wall of water scatter them into the raging river.
Throughout the day, the Texas Department of Public Safety, U.S. Army helicopters and a news chopper from San Antonio television station and KVUE sister station KENS rescued dozens of teens and adults stranded in trees.
Many of the rescues were successful, but not all. Crews reported that a young girl, exhausted from trying to keep afloat in the river, was too weak to grasp a rope and fell back into the water. She did not survive.
Water is an implacable and merciless foe.
The other CBS segment?
Janet Shamlian’s piece on remembering victims was lovely, but so heartbreaking.
So many lives and so many tears in that same place to that same raging river again.
In the midst of all the sorrow, the hard work at hand, the devastating losses, and the unfathomable bile being spewed in spite of it and out of spite, I wanted to share real old-fashioned network reporting. And credit where it was due.
Just the facts in certain circumstances is quite simply the most honorable thing you can do.
And I won’t ask why they did it. I’m just glad they did.
Read the full article here
