Until Trump decided to complain publicly about an ABC News report noting the Alabama mistake. That Monday evening, the president disparaged ABC News’s Jonathan Karl as a “lightweight,” insisting Alabama was at risk. It was a refrain he kept up all week, heightening the conflict by altering an old hurricane map with a marker to make Alabama appear to be more at risk and, later, changing his claims to center on the threat of wind damage. At the time of his tweet, Alabama faced a small chance of 40 mph winds, a threat that has become the formal rationalization for Trump’s tweet.
More importantly, though, we’ve seen how Trump and his administration have attempted to police this nonsensical claim.
View the complete September 9 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.