Here’s Why You Didn’t Get the Presidential Alert Text From Trump Earlier

There are a lot of people confused as to why they didn't get the test alert from President Donald Trump via text earlier today -- here's why.

Today marked the first test of the Emergency Alert Systems new tool that allows the President to send out a "Presidential Alert" in the form of a text that will hit virtually every cell phone in the United States.

The text arrived a couple minutes ahead of the previously announced time of 2:18p and interrupted the podcast I was listening to via Bluetooth in my truck. It replaced the sound with the familiar EAS tone for about 5-8 seconds. At first, I thought it was a comedy bit or commercial, but no -- it was the President. Quick fun fact: It's actually illegal to use those tones for anything but EAS broadcasts.

Anyway, some people (a lot of people, actually) have been saying that they did not receive the text from President Trump. So why wouldn't everybody receive the text alert from POTUS, especially when it will likely be used to warn us about real emergencies?

Plain and simple -- Trump doesn't like you. I didn't want to be the one to tell you this, but he called you "fake news" in his text and said that you were "Sad!" Obviously, I'm kidding.

The real reasons that some did not receive the text alert are pretty simple and not at all nefarious, actually. Here are the three of them:

1. The Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system can only reach phones capable of receiving texts, obviously.
2. Your phone has to be within range of a cellphone tower to receive the alerts
3. You may not use one of the providers that participated in today's test

That's right -- not all cell phone providers were a part of today's exercise. I would imagine in the case of a real emergency, those alerts would go to every phone but who knows? If you did not receive the text, you can see what it looked like above. Don't worry. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of these... especially when election season rolls around in 2020. Yikes.

[SOURCE: FEMA]