With President Donald Trump continuing to double down on his bizarre false claim that Alabama was at one point in the path of Hurricane Dorian, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith took the president to task on Thursday afternoon for his days-long obsession of insisting he’s right over obviously inaccurate information.
“Some things in Trumplandia are inexplicable,” Smith noted during Thursday’s broadcast of Shepard Smith Reporting. “The president said that Alabama was at risk from Hurricane Dorian. It wasn’t. Maybe he made a mistake. Maybe he was confused. We don’t know. But he was wrong.”
Noting that the president has since spent days using “fake visual aids” to prove he was right all along, Smith then pointed out that the whole kerfuffle began on Sunday morning when the president erroneously said on Twitter (and in comments later that day) that Alabama was in danger of getting hit by the storm.
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“That was wrong,” Smith stated, explaining that Trump’s goof was serious enough to warrant a correction by the National Weather Service at the time.
The Fox News anchor, who is known for his methodical fact-checks of the president, went on to highlight Trump’s refusal to admit his mistake which climaxed with him flashing a doctored hurricane map during a White House briefing on Wednesday.
“Why would the president of the United States do this?” Smith wondered aloud. “He decries fake news that isn’t and disseminates fake news that is. Think China pays the tariffs. The wall is going up. Historic inauguration crowds. The Russia probe was a witch hunt. You need an ID to buy cereal. Noise from windmills causes cancer. It’s endless!”
After highlighting Trump saying he didn’t know how the hurricane map was altered with a Sharpie, Smith pointed out that the president later shared a forecast on Twitter from August 28 that showed a potential path to Alabama.
“This is where one where he could apologize and move on,” the Fox anchor exclaimed. “That map was from the day the hurricane became a hurricane. Eight days ago. August 28. It was four days old at the precise time he said Alabama would likely be hit harder than anticipated. By then, it was fake news defined on a very serious subject.”
Smith would then bring on White House correspondent John Roberts, who gave the White House’s latest explanation for how Trump ended up sharing an outdated and altered hurricane map, stating that the map had been left in the Oval Office after a briefing and had been written on by someone during the meeting.
