President Trump just can't let it go, and it's getting weird. In four days of trying to prove that his wrong information about Hurricane Dorian threatening Alabama was actually technically right, Trump has dragged in Homeland Security officials, several outdated maps, a Coast Guard admiral, and even Fox News reporter John Roberts, according to an email Roberts wrote to colleagues and obtained by CNN.
And yes, the president used a Sharpie to alter a government forecast map so it included Alabama, a White House official tells The Washington Post. "No one else writes like that on a map with a black Sharpie," the official said.
In his email, Roberts said Trump called him into the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon and "stressed to me that forecasts for Dorian last week had Alabama in the warning cone," the president presumably "looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point, Alabama was at risk — even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet" on Sunday. A White House aide told CNN that Trump also summoned Roberts "to hit back at Shepard Smith," the Fox News anchor who had just thoroughly deflated Trump's bizarre "fake news" about Dorian and Alabama. "Some things in Trumplandia are inexplicable," Smith shrugged.
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CNN also reports that Trump ordered homeland security adviser Rear Admiral Peter Brown to issue Thursday's 225-word statement affirming that Alabama was at one point at risk for tropical storm-force winds, and Trump himself tweeted out several maps Thursday — from the previous Thursday — showing a 5-20 percent forecast Alabama would get moderately strong winds.
When will Trump move on? "As long as it's in the news, he is not going to drop it," a senior administration official tells the Post. And so it goes.
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