Fox News' Shepard Smith Rips Trump's Hurricane Dorian Blunder As 'Fake News Defined'
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith went after Donald Trump’s “endless” lies Thursday and called the president’s erroneous warning about Hurricane Dorian threatening Alabama “fake news defined.”
Smith wondered why the president can’t simply admit he was wrong instead of wasting “days and days” insisting he’s right. “Some things in Trumplandia are inexplicable,” Smith scoffed on “Shepard Smith Reporting.”
Trump insisted Sunday in a tweet and again later that day that Dorian was threatening Alabama, which was quickly corrected by the National Weather Service.
Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east. #alwx
— NWS Birmingham (@NWSBirmingham) September 1, 2019
On Wednesday Trump justified his warning by pointing to a National Hurricane Center map of Dorian’s possible route that had clearly been altered with some kind of marker to clumsily include Alabama.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” Smith said. “Instead ... the president blamed the media for his own inaccurate warning and then started to rewrite history on the matter” — and used “doctored graphics.”
Smith asked: “Why would the president of the United States do this? He decries fake news that isn’t, and disseminates fake news that is.”
On Thursday, Trump tweeted another map, which appeared to show a thin sliver of Alabama potentially in the path of winds. (“He has no clue what he’s talking about, or what is plotted on that map,” University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy told The Associated Press about Trump’s latest offering. “At the time of that cycle, Alabama was at even lower risk than before, and it was barely anything to start with.”)
Instead of tweeting, it would have been a good time for Trump to “apologize and move on,” said Smith. “That map was from the day the hurricane became a hurricane .... 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 also listed Trump’s other multiple lies. “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!” he said.
Check out Smith’s take on Trump’s Dorian flub in the video up top.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
