President Trump takes zero responsibility for his claim that Hurricane Dorian would also affect Alabama, even going as far as to extend the hurricane’s path on a National Hurricane Center map with a sharpie. This extended area was just a black marker in stark contrast to the printed map.
This comes a few days after Trump called out Jon Karl, a reporter from ABC World News, for reporting on his own misinformation that Alabama could be hit by Hurricane Dorian as “Fake News” and calling him a “lightweight reporter.” Trump then went on to say that it was predicted in original scenarios but it was “better safe than sorry”.
However, Trump refusing to take responsibility for the misinformation may have backfired because he may have committed an actual prosecutable crime which is being called “Sharpie-gate,” while giving a Hurricane Dorian update on Wednesday, Sept 4.
“Whoever knowingly issues or publishes any counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather conditions falsely representing such forecast or warning to have been issued or published by the Weather Bureau, United States Signal Service, or other branch of the Government service, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ninety days, or both.” says 18 U.S. Code § 2074.
Two days before on Sept 2, he tweeted at Jon Karl, a reporter from ABC World News, for reporting on his own misinformation that Alabama could be hit by the Hurricane Dorian and saying that the “Fake News is only interested in demeaning and belittling. Didn’t play my whole sentence or statement. Bad people!”
He then tweeted another graph that was the originally projected graph from the early stages that was seen to go through Georgia and Alabama and that he would be accepting “Fake News” apologies.
Jonathan Karl didn’t respond with an apology, but rather by pointing out the map Trump is referencing was from the South Florida Water Management District and also contained a footnote that the graphic was to be ignored if anything had caused confusion.
Trump insists that Dorian was to hit Alabama and then took a different path, hitting out at the news media that they were aware of this too but they were only reporting upon this information in order to “demean” him.
Fake News & the Scapegoat of Responsibility 