To help prove his point
When in doubt, forge something.
Trump tried to demonstrate that he was right about the hurricane’s heading for Alabama by showing us a weather map on which he had drawn a line into Alabama. “It’s right there! The line! I put it there myself, so you can see I was right!” He actually did that.
After facing ridicule for suggesting over the weekend that Hurricane Dorian might strike Alabama, Donald Trump showed reporters a map on Wednesday that he personally altered to help prove his point.
“Look! Look, you fools, I altered it myself! That proves it!”
During a briefing on the storm’s threat to the U.S. East Coast, the president held up an Aug. 29 map from the National Weather Service showing initial projections of Dorian’s track into Florida. But the map had been changed — by the president — with a black line that extended the storm’s path beyond Florida and into southern Alabama, according to people familiar with the matter.
It’s a line. Once the line is there, the line is the truth.
Tom Brenner/Bloomberg
It’s…it’s a very good line, sir. Not too wobbly at all. Why, it reaches almost to Mississippi, which just goes to show. Sir.
Trump said later on Wednesday that he didn’t know the six-day-old map he showed reporters in the Oval Office had been altered. He said Alabama was going to be hit by the storm in the “original forecast.”
Except he did the altering in front of people. That’s how Bloomberg and everyone else knows he did it with his own tiny hand.
Trump has his very own special Sharpie, so that he can draw thick black lines on anything he wants to with his own royal presidential FatPen.
“I called up the folks at Sharpie and I said, ‘Do me a favor, can you make the pen in black? Can you make it look rich?'” – Donald Trump, 2018
Big boy special throbbing Sharrrrpeeeeee.
Friends are posting lots of #SharpieGate memes. Here’s one I liked.
https://www.facebook.com/134525006573190/posts/3552818501410473/
Trump should try to work that up as a nightclub act: drawing pictures and cartoons in front of the audience as part of it. Could create a lot of diversion from some of the more pressing issues at hand.
If I was on his staff, that is what I would be advising him to do.
Ya I can hardly tear myself away from all the jokes on Twitter.
Also, I forgot to make enough of the absurdity of the line itself – Trump’s brilliant wheeze to stick a clumsy wrong-color semi-circle on a professional official NOAA chart like that. Here’s the actual forecast track, and then here’s a stupid squiggle drawn on it by the incumbent of the Oval Office.
follows Sackbut’s link. falls over laughing
My favourite part of it is that it shows he has no fucking clue how to read the map, he has no idea how pathway probabilities work. There is no way the last ‘bubble’ can be smaller than the preceding ones.
God, he has the mentality of an absolute child.
Also, too, what Naif just wrote about probabilities.
Does he dress himself in the morning?
Does he do his own hair?
Have we reached peak stupid yet? Geez, Louise!
@chigau #8: afaict, the ONLY social norm DJT confirms to is that he wears clothes in public. Everything else, including deliberately killing people, is violable.
Next time he should use a purple crayon. It’s much more effective.
Naif, to be fair, I meet very few people who do understand how statistics work. Some very educated, very smart people who have no idea how to evaluate statistics. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that most of the people we meet don’t understand how statistics work.
Of course, most people we meet aren’t president of the United States. And most of them would know better than to draw a stupid line on a map to ‘prove’ something they had said. Because even a kid would be able to answer the question “Which one of these things does not belong?”
That black sharpie… I mean, come on, we know he just got two normal sharpies and then used one to colour the other one in, right?
I just… how can anyone not be embarrassed by this turbo-toddler?
“That’s not a cat license! It’s a dog license with the word dog crossed out and the word cat written in with crayon!”
Monty Python
Why is the dotard so incapable of just admitting that he mis-spoke, saying Alabama when he meant Bahamas? Or does he refuse to say The Bahamas because it sounds too much like The Obamas?
Actually, scrub that second question. I’m sure he’d love to announce that the Obamas have been flattened by a hurricane.
Given his hatred of the Obamas, I’m surprised Trump can bring himself to say the name of Barack’s brother Al.
Too many people believe admitting a mistake is a sign of stupidity. I have a brother like that – he won’t admit a mistake for anything. (He’s like Trump in almost every other way, too, except he has no money).
As I try to teach my students, admitting a mistake is a sign of intelligence. Most people don’t recognize that, though, and so no one wants to admit making a mistake. (I’ll be honest, I struggle with that myself, but part of that is because whenever I make a mistake, people assume it’s because I’m a woman and I don’t like to do that to my sex. But, hey, I’m human, right?)
The day he tweeted out that Alabama will be in the course, he used information used in a map that was 4 days old. What a freaking idiot! This is the leader of our country and is responsible for our country’s safety. Geez!
Trump Supporter:
“Look, someone else did that to make the president look stupid … unless he did it himself, in which case it shows how the guy is always thinking, planning, scheming to take control just like a successful wheeler dealer in the business world. It’s the kind of take charge never- give- up mentality we need in the White House! Don’t let people push you around! More jobs! End abortion! Christians are persecuted! Stop illegal aliens! Not to mention all those judges …
Sharp people use sharpies.”
I’m meeting with Trump’s lawyers today. I have a map that clearly shows (in red sharpie so it’s totally official!) that my property line extends to include both the NY Trump Tower and Mar a Lago. I’ll give them ten days to vacate. Trump Tower will be re-purposed as a nature preserve for the Nouveau riche (no remodeling required). Mar a Lago will be razed to make way for an alligator farm.
Undraining the swamp?
Adding to Naif #6 and iknklast #11 — For the last ‘bubble’ to get smaller (as drawn by the marker), the spaghetti plot of track predictions would be converging toward a mathematical attractor, and that convergence could only be caused by some unknown physics with a level of energy beyond the worldly control of humans.
I laughed out loud once I pictured Trump wielding the power of a Sharpie like that. It reminds me of a joke I read in elementary school: To catch an elephant, you can look at it through binoculars the wrong way, pick it up with tweezers, and put it in a jar.
Hahaha same here, I found myself bursting into laughter in the shower at the mental image of him with that Sharpie.