President Trump drew the Sharpie bubble, according to a White House official.
The insider source told the Washington Post it was the president himself who doctored a daysold National Hurricane Center that he presented in the Oval Office on Wednesday, showing Hurricane Dorian threatening southeast Alabama. “No one else writes like that on a map with a black Sharpie,” the unnamed White House official said.
Trump had shown reporters the NHC map from Aug. 29, before Dorian even reached the Bahamas, as he defended himself from backlash for saying over the weekend that Alabama could “most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by the hurricane.
[Related: ‘Inaccurate, misleading and fake’: Fox meteorologist rips Trump over doctored hurricane map]
The short-term forecast cone covered the Bahamas, and its extended reach, outlined in white, covered the Florida peninsula. But added to the graphic was a black semicircle next to the NHC forecast cone that reached over the Florida panhandle and a part of Alabama. When a reporter asked him about the add-on, Trump only said, “I don’t know.”
As Trump railed against the media for reporting that his message for Alabama was outdated, while weather experts point out that by Sunday the forecast had largely dismissed the possibility of Dorian heading toward the state, a White House adviser released a statement Thursday explaining that Trump’s claim was based on a briefing he received.
