Sharpie-gate continued: Trump doubles down on Dorian's aim for Alabama

By Jeff Mason

 

U.S. President Donald Trump stands in the Oval Office during a presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to NBA Hall of Famer Jerry West at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 5, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump, not someone who easily lets things go, doubled down on Thursday on his insistence that Alabama could have been hit by Hurricane Dorian and enlisted his top homeland security adviser to back him up.

 

On Wednesday, the president displayed a map of the storm's projected path that appeared to have been altered with a Sharpie pen to include the state of Alabama, following his remarks on Sunday in which he said it could be affected by the storm.

 

In fact, the National Hurricane Center's advisory on Sunday morning did not include the state, and the National Weather Service denied that Alabama would be affected after Trump suggested initial projections showed the storm heading toward the Gulf of Mexico, where Alabama has a coastline.

 

"Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east," the National Weather Service in Alabama tweeted.

 

News reports about the discrepancies and about the apparently Sharpie-edited map exploded on social media - the term #SharpiePresident was trending on Twitter - prompting Trump to fire back.

 

"Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit. The Fake News denies it!" Trump, using his preferred pejorative for the media, tweeted along with a collection of maps on Thursday afternoon. "I was with you all the way Alabama. The Fake News Media was not!"

 

Alabama is a largely conservative state that supported the Republican Trump in the 2016 election.

 

Later in the day, after Trump declined to answer a question from a reporter in the Oval Office about his focus on the issue, the White House released a statement from Rear Admiral Peter Brown, the president's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, who said he had briefed Trump about the potential path of the storm using the NHC forecast and other models.

 

FORECAST TRACK 'CHANGED SUBSTANTIALLY'

Brown said Trump's comments to the press on Sunday, when he discussed Alabama during a visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters, were based on that morning's Hurricane Dorian briefing, which included "the possibility of tropical storm force winds in southeastern Alabama."

 

"In fact, from the evening of Tuesday, August 27, until the morning of Monday, September 2, forecasts from the National Hurricane Centre showed the possibility of tropical storm force winds hitting parts of Alabama," Brown wrote.

 

Brown noted that the forecast track "changed substantially over time" and areas that were originally seen as targets such as Puerto Rico, South Florida and the Gulf Coast experienced "minimal to no impact from Hurricane Dorian."

 

Early NHS models of the hurricane last week showed roughly a dozen or so trajectories, including one that took it into the Gulf. But by Sunday, when the president discussed Alabama, the trajectories clearly showed the storm going to the Atlantic and not the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Democrat from Texas who chairs the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, expressed concern about Trump's actions in a letter to him on Thursday.

 

“In times of emergency, the American public need to have confidence in the information being provided by the White House, and misrepresentation of National Weather Service (NWS) forecasts is especially disturbing when it concerns an ongoing natural disaster that has already killed twenty people,” she wrote.

 

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Additional reporting by Eric Beech in Washington and Bill Tarrant in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney)

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-09-06

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The guy really is a clown and the whole world can see it.

 

I mean he is either saying sorry I did not have the right data and did not update it on time or still insisting he was right. Either way huge pie on his face. Also the fact he never heard of a category 5 while he has mentioned a category 5 multiple times in the past.  

Half-expecting to hear that he has ordered the Space Force to corral Dorian and drag it back to Alabama.

 

 

Distracting imo and certainly is and looks the fool

I am just numb from 3 years of this clown's lies and his team and other republicans completely in terror of him. Whatever happened to the 'merkins' bravery and resolve? Gone!

Fake news indeed!  Even the weather reports have become politically contentious.

The impressive thing is Fox News is covering this silliness.  They usually don't report on his more ridiculous pronouncements.

 

 

Edited September 6, 20196 yr by bendejo

I just wish that for once he could find it within himself to say "Sorry folks, I got that one wrong." It is a perfectly normal thing to do for rational people. Doubling down on lies and mistakes only makes him look even more stupid, if that were possible.

Couple of narcissistic sociapathic traits is the inability to say sorry and lack of guilt for their actions.

19 minutes ago, ThreeEyedRaven said:

I just wish that for once he could find it within himself to say "Sorry folks, I got that one wrong." It is a perfectly normal thing to do for rational people. Doubling down on lies and mistakes only makes him look even more stupid, if that were possible.

Exactly.  This was a non-issue for me from the beginning.  We all make mistakes, no big deal.  All he had to do was say he misspoke and it would have been over.  But it's Trump's MO to never admit he was wrong that is dragging this thing out.  A Roy Cohn thing which is incredibly misguided and stupid. 

23 minutes ago, ThreeEyedRaven said:

I just wish that for once he could find it within himself to say "Sorry folks, I got that one wrong." It is a perfectly normal thing to do for rational people. Doubling down on lies and mistakes only makes him look even more stupid, if that were possible.

Impossible wish to grant in this case. 

When Dorian was far away they predicted it would go straight through Florida and into the gulf. All major oil companies evacuated non-essential personnel from the gulf. Alabama is on the gulf.

Much to do about nothing, just more media muck. Dorian was an unusually difficult storm to predict. Earlier predictions did show Dorian crossing the Florida peninsula in the direction of Alabama.  Hurricanes don't just disappear, they continue until nothing is left. Thus, Dorian would have continued into Alabama according to early predictions. Why did the graph stop? Cause they only predict 5 days in advance.

 

The real story as I see it is that fake news is desperate to find something anything to hold against the guy as their weak "contenders" for 2020 keep fading away and the economy keeps humming along.

7 minutes ago, daoyai said:

The real story as I see it is that fake news is desperate to find something anything to hold against the guy as their weak "contenders" for 2020 keep fading away and the economy keeps humming along.

 

I trade oil futures as such I can tell you there was a draw down on inventory because of the storm might go into the gulf. These things can't be predicted. This whole story is a bunch of tripe. The climate change town hall last night was amusing.

Obviously Trump is, as usual, acting like a child, trying justify his erroneous statement rather than just admit it was incorrect and move on. But the media attention being given to "Sharpie-gate" has become equally stupid. Switched on CNN this morning and they're still moaning on and on about it. Yes there is a clear objective to give Trump the boot in 2020, but major news sources falling into the same gutter of silly stupidity isn't the way to do that. 

Just now, Captain_Bob said:

Obviously Trump is, as usual, acting like a child, trying justify his erroneous statement rather than just admit it was incorrect and move on. But the media attention being given to "Sharpie-gate" has become equally stupid. Switched on CNN this morning and they're still moaning on and on about it. Yes there is a clear objective to give Trump the boot in 2020, but major news sources falling into the same gutter of silly stupidity isn't the way to do that. 

The hurricane was forecast to go through the gulf. This is much to do about nothing. 

Hard to imagine the scale of bottled up hate out there, but reading this thread proves it is real and terrifying. Trump did his best to warn any communities likely or possibly being affected by Dorian and reacted accordingly. Better safe than sorry I would say. Time for the haters to grow up and move on in life. Such a fuss over such a irrelevant incident is indeed worrying.

3 minutes ago, TopDeadSenter said:

Hard to imagine the scale of bottled up hate out there, but reading this thread proves it is real and terrifying. Trump did his best to warn any communities likely or possibly being affected by Dorian and reacted accordingly. Better safe than sorry I would say. Time for the haters to grow up and move on in life. Such a fuss over such a irrelevant incident is indeed worrying.

 

I am outraged Alabama wasn't wiped out.

I can't wait for Trump's next tweet storm.  When he tries to warn us all about the millennium bug.

37 minutes ago, Cryingdick said:

The hurricane was forecast to go through the gulf. This is much to do about nothing. 

When?

 

He was briefed both wednesday and sunday and neither of those briefings included alabama. He just made it up.

9 minutes ago, ThaiBunny said:

Changing a weather forecast is illegal?

> Title and link to TIME article 

Here's Why U.S. Law Prohibits Claiming That a 'Counterfeit Weather Forecast' Is Official

> https://time.com/5670168/trump-hurricane-map-alabama-weather-law/

 

I would just like to reassure the American people that everything is OK, Mar-a-Lago and Alabama have come out of this unscathed.

5 hours ago, robblok said:

The guy really is a clown and the whole world can see it.

 

I mean he is either saying sorry I did not have the right data and did not update it on time or still insisting he was right. Either way huge pie on his face. Also the fact he never heard of a category 5 while he has mentioned a category 5 multiple times in the past.  

 

He's one of those people who will never ever admit to being wrong no matter how fanciful and how stupid that makes him look. I guess in his previous business life none of his employees would dare challenge anything he said. Now in his political life he quickly gets out of sorts when challenged but refuses to back down. Nature of the beast.

That spade he is using must be worn out with all that digging, the hole must be a 100 meters deep.

Troll posts and replies have been removed. 

 

Posts containing insulting or inflammatory comments toward other members have been removed as well as the replies. 

4 hours ago, TopDeadSenter said:

Such a fuss over such a irrelevant incident is indeed worrying.

You got that right. Whatever initially prompted Trump to include “Alabama,” when the media pointed out the error, the correct response on Trump’s part would have been to have simply ignored it and “moved on,” as you say -- the whole matter is, as you mention, “irrelevant.” Instead, Trump has issued countless tweets about this nonissue, called in John Roberts of Fox News to complain about it, instructed underlings with better things to do to issue statements about it, doctored a map, and what else -- how many hours has he wasted on this? He’s obsessive, easily rattled over trifles, and clearly unfit for office.

6 hours ago, Somtamnication said:

I am just numb from 3 years of this clown's lies and his team and other republicans completely in terror of him. Whatever happened to the 'merkins' bravery and resolve? Gone!

FLOTUS has joined the liars club today. Claimed she had a Slovakian degree in design and architecture, in her web bio; no she went modeling instead never finished the degree. Told everyone she speaks 5 languages including French fluently, yet at G7 summit she was filmed using headphones for the English version of what was broadcasted in French language.

Narcissists are incapable of admitting they are wrong, that someone else might know more than them (in this case the weather service, who had to responsibly notify people of reality that Alabama was not going to get hit). That ABC chart may have been best guess at the time but it had been updated by time DJT tweeted. Recall he didn't go to Poland to congratulate them over being invaded by Nazis, he was staying home (and playing golf) so he could stay on top of the situation (which he didn't)

 I used to do charity work with full bore narcissist: never admit wrong, lie about how smart and accomplished they are, never listen to anyone but themselves.

So Rear Admiral Peter Brown, United states Navy - is another snivelling toady with his nose up Trumps sphincter. Yes boss, no boss - here's the nuclear code keys - got to keep my job..........

 

How degrading for the mighty USN - John Paul Jones would spit on the cretin!

6 hours ago, Cryingdick said:

When Dorian was far away they predicted it would go straight through Florida and into the gulf. All major oil companies evacuated non-essential personnel from the gulf. Alabama is on the gulf.

And dog <deleted> tastes good as well, eh?