Amid his relentless crusade to defend himself against the Hurricane Dorian map snafu, President Donald Trump turned to Fox News.
According to a CNN report Thursday night, Trump called Fox News correspondent John Roberts into the Oval Office shortly after Roberts finished his 3 p.m. live shot Thursday to argue that he wasn’t wrong about Dorian’s path including Alabama.
“He stressed to me that forecasts for Dorian last week had Alabama in the warning cone,” Roberts wrote in an internal Fox email regarding his meeting with Trump, which CNN obtained. “He insisted that it is unfair to say Alabama was never threatened by the storm.”
In the email CNN obtained, Roberts said that the President was “just looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point, Alabama was at risk — even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet” Sunday morning saying that the state “will most likely be hit.”
CNN reported that the President additionally provided Roberts with graphics to make his argument.
A White House aide familiar with the Oval Office meeting told CNN that Trump also brought up his ongoing displeasure with Fox News anchor Shep Smith, a notable liberal voice on the network, and his skeptical reporting on the Alabama map. The aide told CNN that Trump then summoned Roberts “to hit back at Shepard Smith.”
Roberts said in the email provided to CNN that he pointed out to Trump that by the time he had sent out his Sunday morning tweet warning Alabama and other states of the storm, Dorian’s projected trajectory had already moved much farther east and no longer included Alabama.
Roberts wrote that Trump “seemed to agree that the forecast track had moved — but he was adamant that at some point, Alabama was at risk.” Roberts added that the President “also reminded that on occasions in the past, forecast tracks have changed dramatically.”
Read CNN’s report here.
