Ari Melber’s Zapruder-Esque Breakdown of Trump’s Sharpie-Gate Will Leave You In Stitches: ‘Who Altered the Map?’
MSNBC’s Ari Melber performed a (definitely tongue-in-cheek) Oliver-Stone-in-JFK-level analysis as to what really happened when President Donald Trump displayed a week-old National Weather Service map that seemed to now show Alabama in the path of Hurricane Dorian: “Who altered the map? Why did they use a black Sharpie?”
This latest twist in a we’re-living-the-weirdest-timeline saga came days after the National Weather Service had to issue a not-so-subtle correction to Trump’s inaccurate comment during a FEMA briefing that Alabama was threatened by the storm, and also after Trump insulted on Twitter an ABC News reporter who pointed out the president’s false statement.
Undaunted but apologetic, Melber entered into the fray.
“One other thing that we absolutely had to get to. This Trump controversy that is being called — I’m sorry — Sharpie-gate,” he said before playing a clip of Trump holding up the projection map that included a big red arrow highlighting a conspicuous, drawn-in bump that edged into southeast Alabama. “Someone drew on an extra part to make it appear as if Alabama might also be in the storm’s path which it wasn’t. You see it right here. This is the important part because that extra line which appears to be drawn in a Sharpie marker. Notice it doesn’t match the underlying white line used for the path of the storm.”
“Who altered the map? Why did they use a black sharpie instead of a white line that might look more realistic?” Melber went on, pressing his case against the most likely suspect. “I can’t tell you we know at this time but I can give you the evidence. We know the president has an affinity for the Sharpie marker. He uses them to sign official government documents. He uses them for notes before he speaks publicly and he uses them even to write thickly-worded, angry notes to reporters and columnists even underlying the words.”
“There’s so much there. There are many problems,” Melber said, no longer able to maintain a straight face, before lapsing into the very same response Trump gave when asked directly by a reporter how the Sharpie alteration got on the map: “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
