Trump Actually Altered a Hurricane Map to Back up His Dumb Claim That It Would Hit Alabama

By Shane Ryan  |  September 4, 2019 | 3:28pm
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Politics Features Donald Trump
Trump Actually Altered a Hurricane Map to Back up His Dumb Claim That It Would Hit Alabama

As with many of our dumbest Trump stories, this one has several layers, and so the first thing you have to know is that for reasons known only to him, our president tweeted out some incorrect information on Sunday—namely, that Hurricane Dorian would strike Alabama:

That wasn’t true, and a meteorologist from the state refuted it quickly:

The National Weather Service quickly backed him up:

As the day went on, Trump continued to claim that the storm would hit Alabama:

Alabama is going to get a piece of it, it looks like.

and:

He said Dorian “may get a little piece of a great place: It’s called Alabama.”

Of course, this is more than just a misspeak, since the actual president warning Alabamans of danger has far-reaching effects, but it seemed like the real scientists had nipped things in the bud.

It became a bigger story on Monday, though, when “World News Tonight” said the president had “misstated the storm’s possible trajectory,” at which point Trump did the sensible thing and…oh wait, no. No he didn’t. He doubled down:

So, the new claim was that “under original scenarios” Alabama was in the path. Which brings us to this afternoon, and a short video tweeted out by the White House account in which Trump goes into detail on that original trajectory:

Trump talked about how “other states” could have been affected before the hurricane took a “right turn,” but let’s take a closer look at that image of the potential path:

Screen Shot 2019-09-04 at 3.08.08 PM.png

You’ll notice there’s a path outlined in white, which stops well short of the Alabama border…but then there’s another bubble, in black, extending from that white bubble, and it actually encompasses part of southeast Alabama near the gulf coast. Where does that black bubble come from?

The answer, it seems, is that Trump or someone close to him actually drew it on in order to validate his earlier nonsense about where the hurricane was heading.

That is absolutely outrageous—our president, in order to protect his ego and because he hates admitting he’s wrong, actually changed or had someone else change a hurricane map to prove some idiotic point that he was wrong about from the beginning.

This is truly the work of a petulant child, and almost three years into his presidency, we remain flabbergasted by the thin-skinned vanity this man routinely displays.

 
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