Trump seems upset the media, National Weather Service corrected his bad information on Alabama and Hurricane Dorian
President Trump tweeted Sunday morning that Alabama was among the states "most likely" to be "hit (much) harder than anticipated" by Hurricane Dorian. About 20 minutes later, the National Weather Service disagreed.
A few minutes after the NWS's Birmingham office corrected Trump, according to a time line put together by CNN's Brian Stelter, the president told reporters "we don't know where it's going to hit, but we have an idea," and "Alabama is going to get a piece of it, it looks like." And about an hour later, Trump said at a FEMA briefing that Dorian "may get a little piece of a great place: It's called Alabama," adding that Alabama "could even be in for at least some very strong winds and something more than that, it could be. This just came up, unfortunately."
The government has never publicly forecast that Alabama would take a hit from Dorian, and neither had any publicly released model.
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So Trump appeared to have made a mistake, as several news organizations noted Monday. On Monday night, Trump couldn't let it go.
You can read Stelter's parsing of Trump's hinky language at CNN, and/or you can consider sparing some thoughts or money for the people of the Bahamas, who were most definitely hurt by Hurricane Dorian.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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