President Donald Trump clings to idea Alabama faced big threat from Dorian.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump isn’t giving up on the idea that Alabama faced a serious threat from Hurricane Dorian.
During an Oval Office briefing Wednesday, Trump displayed a map of the National Hurricane Center forecast last week that showed Dorian could track over Florida. The map he displayed included what appeared to be a handdrawn half-circle that extended the cone of uncertainty over a swath of Alabama.
Trump had drawn an emphatic fact check from the National Weather Service on Sunday when he tweeted that Alabama, along with the Carolinas and Georgia, “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.”
The National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, tweeted in response: “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.”
On Monday, Trump pushed back by insisting that “under certain original scenarios, it was in fact correct that Alabama could have received some ‘hurt.’ ”
And then, on Wednesday, Trump displayed t he graphic with the alteration that showed the storm could have tracked over Alabama. Trump had no explanation for the altered map. “I know that Alabama was in the original forecast,” he said.
He added: “Actually, we have a better map than that which is going to be presented.”
Forecasts from overnight last Friday showed a sliver of Alabama at the edge of the five-day cone of uncertainty. But by Saturday morning — more than 24 hours before Trump’s warning about Alabama — the storm was predicted to pose no threat to the state.
Trump later tweeted a map from Aug. 28.