As Hurricane Dorian darkened the skies over the Carolinas on Thursday, the Category 2 storm also fueled a squabble between the White House press secretary and CNN.
Stephanie Grisham, President Donald Trump's top spokeswoman, delivered the first blow, chastising the network for an on-air graphic mislabeling the state of Alabama as Mississippi.
“Hi @CNN, I know you guys are busy analyzing lines on a map, but perhaps you use your time to study up on U.S. geography?” she
The Twitter account for the network’s communication’s team, @CNNPR, hit back in a
The retort represented a veiled jab at the president’s ongoing refusal to acknowledge he erred in predicting Dorian would hammer Alabama as it approached the United States. Trump was roundly mocked on social media after displaying from the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon an apparently Sharpie-altered early forecast showing the state within the storm’s path.
The doctored map backed up Trump’s assessment in a Sunday
Trump dug in Thursday morning, firing off at least four tweets or retweets defending himself and criticizing reporters’ coverage of his dubious claim.
“Alabama was going to be hit or grazed, and then Hurricane Dorian took a different path (up along the East Coast),” he
Eric Trump, the president’s son, also joined in on the attacks, citing the “pettiness” of a Washington Post story on the controversy as “exactly why the public hates the media.”
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine