Hawaii's Governor Says He Knew That Missile Alert Was A False Alarm But Couldn't Tell People On Twitter Because He Forgot His Password

WaPo- Minutes after the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency mistakenly sent a missile alert at 8:07 a.m. on Jan. 13 — terrifying residents and visitors across the state — some officials, such as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), rushed to Twitter to reassure everyone it was a mistake.

But one Twitter account was deafeningly silent for 17 minutes: that of Hawaii Gov. David Ige. Though Ige was informed by the state’s adjutant general that the alert was false two minutes after it was sent, he waited until 8:24 a.m. to tweet, “There is NO missile threat.”

On Monday, after he gave the State of the State address in which he avoided the subject of the missile alert fiasco, reporters demanded an explanation for that long silence.

Ige’s answer: he couldn’t log into Twitter. “I have to confess that I don’t know my Twitter account log-ons and the passwords, so certainly that’s one of the changes that I’ve made,” Ige said.

Look at Governor Ige going with the most relatable excuse in the history of the world. I don’t know if the 1.5 million people that thought they were going to be nuked can even be mad at the Governor after reading this. Let he without sin cast the first stone. We’ve all clicked a Forgot Password link. It’s pretty much original sin for anyone who has ever gone on the internet. Regular shmoes like you and I don’t have to change our passwords unless we think we forgot it or think we have been hacked. But I bet government employees have to change that shit every other week. There are only so many times you can change Hawaii123! to Hawaii1234! before you make wholesale changes to your password. And no matter how clueless you are, nobody wants to hit that Forgot Password link unless it’s the absolute last resort. It’s pretty much what asking directions was like before every single one of us had supercomputers with a GPS in our pockets. Hell, you can say that admitting you can’t remember your password and clicking that link is like hitting the nuclear warhead button on a fraction of a scale. It’s the absolute last resort when all attempts for a solution appear to be gone.

This shit is so relatable, I bet Larry David had an entire Curb episode planned about a politician forgetting his password to tell people that a nuke actually wasn’t actually heading toward Los Angeles. After trying about 10 passwords with different CAPS, letters, numbers, and symbols combinations, he finally breaks down and clicks that dreaded Forgot Password link. And THEN he forgets the answer to his security question (pet’s first name), which brings us all the way back to square one. By the time he remembers the name of his childhood goldfish Goldie (classic kid’s name for a pet) due to the B-story being about the actor that played Goldie Wilson in Back To The Future, people are already in their locked in their doomsday bunkers, trying drugs and other things they always wanted to try but were too scared to, and/or having sex with the closest person they could find before the missile touched down. But instead, that actually happened in real life and now Larry David has to go back to the drawing board before he starts shooting the next season of Curb in a decade or so.

Also shout out to Governor Ige for sending out the best Quote Retweet in the history of Twitter after he finally changed his password.

Now that’s how you lead! Take the original tweet, throw a “There” in the beginning and a period at the end and wait for your approval rating to rise escalator style. That was pretty much someone quote retweeting a Woj Bomb with a “Wut” or “OMG” just to get those likes and retweets except it’s about nuclear annihilation instead of Jason Kidd getting fired. And you know what? I don’t hate it. The game is the game, yo.

Orrrrrr this is all a perfect excuse to explain the governor’s radio silence while the rest of the people high up in Hawaii’s government knows that the real missile was shot down over a remote spot over the Pacific Ocean.