Trump can't stop drawing attention to his Alabama gaffe

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

last updated 5 September 2019

President Trump believes an outdated map is proof that his many assertions about Alabama being in the path of Hurricane Dorian were not erroneous.

It all started Sunday, when Trump tweeted that Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama "will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated" by Dorian. Alabama, however, was not in any danger, and this was quickly noted by meteorologists and the National Weather Service's Birmingham office, which tweeted: "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."

Unwilling to move past his error, Trump tweeted on Monday that he was right to say Alabama "could have received some 'hurt,'" and on Wednesday afternoon, the White House tweeted a video showing Trump with what was allegedly an early projection map showing Hurricane Dorian's path. It wasn't hard to see that the map had been altered with a black marker to make it look like Alabama could have been hit.

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Not content to stop there, Trump then tweeted a photo of another map showing Dorian's possible paths. "This was the originally projected path of the Hurricane in its early stages," he wrote. "As you can see, almost all models predicted it to go through Florida also hitting Georgia and Alabama." That isn't true if you look at his map, but regardless, the map he shared is dated Aug. 28, making it outdated by his first Alabama tweet on Sept. 1. Also, there's a message in fine print at the bottom of the map that gives us all permission to just pretend none of this happened: "NHC Advisories and County Emergency Management Statements supersede this product. This graphic should complement, not replace, NHC discussions. If anything on this graphic causes confusion, ignore the entire product."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.