title:  With Irma About To Strike Florida, Trump Begs For Donations To His Re-Election Campaign
text: Trump has been tweeting about Hurricane Irma sort of for the last couple of days. His tweets mostly consist of bragging that his emergency teams are ready and telling people to stay safe. But while he s pretending to be concerned, he s also sending out messages begging people for donations; not to the charities and rescue organizations that are, and will be, on the ground in Florida during and after Irma, but to himself and his 2020 campaign.He s not even making a pretense of asking for donations to help him help those in Irma s path. Seriously. This is what he s sending out to his followers:The link in the above image goes to the donation page on Trump s campaign site, where a video again attacks career politicians and the media, and goes into his usual spiel about  Let s finish the job,  and  Make America great again.  It s ridiculously tone-deaf in light of how many are scrambling to aid those in Irma s path.He bragged about his response to the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, but he s not really doing anything but tweeting about Irma and closing Mar-a-Lago ahead of landfall. He s made a Facebook video that, like his tweets, urges people to get out of Irma s way, but many don t have that choice.The federal government has three major relief efforts to deal with right now: Ongoing recovery efforts in Texas and Louisiana, live-saving efforts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (where Irma has already hit), and evacuation and preparation efforts in Florida, which is more or less closed and in chaos.Trump will  monitor  Irma from the safety of Camp David and beg for donations to his campaign instead of do some real work.His timing for this kind of a message is especially poor. If he wants to ask for donations, fine. But he should be directing people to donate to the non-profits and other organizations that are on the ground everywhere in Irma s path and put his stupid, vapid campaign on hold. His priorities are clear, and they do not lie with the American people.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images