On Wednesday, President Donald Trump left many baffled after he decided to show a map of hurricane Dorian’s projected path and for some unknown and bizarre reason someone used a sharpie to make it look like it will hit Alabama.
Even though all weather experts including the Birmingham, Alabama, branch of the National Weather Service, revealed that Dorian is headed towards the Carolinas, the president insisted on pushing the incorrect claim that the hurricane would pass through Alabama.
When reporters asked Trump about creating confusion by using the wrong projected path of the hurricane, he had this to say: “I don’t know.”
Now, what is very odd is that in the early hours of Thursday, Trump shared several tweets with what he called the “originally projected path of Dorian” and said it slammed over the state of Alabama.
He tweeted:
….Instead it turned North and went up the coast, where it continues now. In the one model through Florida, the Great State of Alabama would have been hit or grazed. In the path it took, no. Read my FULL FEMA statement. What I said was accurate! All Fake News in order to demean!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2019
A few hours, Trump piled on with the fake weather:
Alabama was going to be hit or grazed, and then Hurricane Dorian took a different path (up along the East Coast). The Fake News knows this very well. That’s why they’re the Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2019
According to the latest update from the National Hurricane Center, as of 1 p.m. ET Thursday, Dorian is a Category 2 storm and is located 55 miles east of Charleston, South Carolina, and 125 miles south-southwest of Wilmington, North Carolina.
The hurricane center still considered Dorian as a dangerous storm that might be strengthened.
One person had this reaction to Trump’s obsession with Dorian, Alabama, and the sharpie: “Again, and again, and again…. every day more embarrassment and more ridiculous, pathetic, behavior by Trump!!! How is this madness acceptable?? What does he have to do before people say enough? Why does he always have to lie?”
Another critic claimed: “Because he’s a meteorologist right? You ppl are stupid. And because he had no idea what he was talking about and said it was heading towards Alabama… It’s not. This was some weak attempt to cover that up.”
A voter reminded POTUS that changing or modifying a weather map is a crime: “Jeez…he really did this? And no one thinks he’s mentally ill????? Wow… He really took a sharpie and drew on it in an embarrassing attempt to make it seem like he didn’t just talk from his ass in regards to Alabama ??? , by the way, altering a national weather service map is a federal crime.”
The social media user wrote: “It is a violation of federal law to falsify a National Weather Service forecast and pass it off as official, as President Trump did here.”
One of Trump’s backers defended him by saying: “Well, there it is NBC news you got him. Impeach now!!! He used the wrong map!!! So what? Who knows why it’s there, maybe fake news NBC photoshopped it in. With their record, I wouldn’t doubt it.”
NBC News’ Al Roker says “Sharpiegate” is a distraction and it is time to move on.
