John Roberts, the chief White House correspondent at Fox News, was called into the Oval Office after he finished a live shot Thursday afternoon so that President Trump could argue he wasn’t wrong about Hurricane Dorian’s path.
“He stressed to me that forecasts for Dorian last week had Alabama in the warning cone,” Roberts wrote in an email to Fox colleagues, which was obtained by CNN. “He insisted that it is unfair to say Alabama was never threatened by the storm.”
Fox News first reported the meeting between Trump and Roberts.
Roberts wrote that Trump was “just 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.
Trump also asked him “to hit back at” Fox colleague Shepard Smith, who has described the president’s handling of the controversy as “inexplicable,” a White House aide told CNN.
Roberts said in his email that he told Trump that by the time the president sent a tweet about Alabama being in the storm’s path that Dorian’s projected trajectory no longer included any part of Alabama.
Trump “seemed to agree that the forecast track had moved — but he was adamant that at some point, Alabama was at risk,” Roberts wrote. “He also reminded that on occasions in the past, forecast tracks have changed dramatically.”
The president has spent days defending his outdated claim that Alabama could be hit by the hurricane. Though earlier forecasts showed Dorian could head in Alabama’s direction, the information was incorrect by the time Trump tweeted it over the weekend.
