Flashes anger....

Trump flashes anger about Alabama forecast as Dorian bears down on Carolinas

By QUINT FORGEY

President Donald Trump insisted once again on Thursday morning that initial weather forecasts put Alabama potentially within Hurricane Dorian’s destructive path, blasting media accounts of his dubious meteorological claim as “Fake News in order to demean!”

“In the early days of the hurricane, when it was predicted that Dorian would go through Miami or West Palm Beach, even before it reached the Bahamas, certain models strongly suggested that Alabama & Georgia would be hit as it made its way through Florida & to the Gulf,” Trump tweeted.

“Instead it turned North and went up the coast, where it continues now,” he continued in a second post. “In the one model through Florida, the Great State of Alabama would have been hit or grazed. In the path it took, no. Read my FULL FEMA statement. What I said was accurate! All Fake News in order to demean!”

A little less than two hours later, Trump tweeted a third time: "Alabama was going to be hit or grazed, and then Hurricane Dorian took a different path (up along the East Coast). The Fake News knows this very well. That’s why they’re the Fake News!"

Trump on Wednesday was the subject of online mockery after an Oval Office storm briefing in which he showed off an apparently doctored National Hurricane Center projection of Dorian’s early trajectory that appeared to be hand-altered to include Alabama.

But when asked about what looked like a conspicuous Sharpie mark on the federal forecast at an event later in the afternoon, Trump repeatedly said “I don’t know,” and announced the White House would issue “a better map” with “many models” advising that “in all cases Alabama was hit, if not likely, in some cases pretty hard.”

Trump on Thursday also retweeted a map plotting Dorian’s potential paths that he first posted online Wednesday evening, which was dated Aug. 28 and appeared to originate from the South Florida Water Management District.

But the map included a disclaimer stating that "NHC Advisories and County Emergency Management Statements supersede this product," and that the graphic "should complement, not relpace, NHC discussions."

“This was the originally projected path of the Hurricane in its early stages,” Trump wrote in his message Wednesday. “As you can see, almost all models predicted it to go through Florida also hitting Georgia and Alabama. I accept the Fake News apologies!”

Trump’s decision to defend anew his dubious warning about Alabama comes as Dorian has strengthened into a Category 3 storm bearing down on the coast of South Carolina.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., remarked Thursday that "I feel sorry for the president," calling the controversy over the modified map "humiliating" and "an embarrassing moment" for the United States.

"What we're seeing there is literally pathetic," Buttigieg, a Democratic presidential candidate, told CNN. "It makes you feel a kind of pity for everybody involved, and that's not how I want to feel about the president — whether it's for my party or the other."