The Hurricane Dorian Sharpie Incident
Rather than admit a mistaken tweet about Hurricane Dorian threatening Alabama, Trump displayed a doctored weather map altered with a Sharpie in the Oval Office, then pressured NOAA to back up his false claim.
On September 1, 2019, Trump tweeted that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama "harder than anticipated." The National Weather Service office in Birmingham immediately corrected this, stating Alabama would "NOT see any impacts from Dorian."
Rather than simply acknowledging the error, Trump doubled down. On September 4, he displayed an official NOAA forecast map in the Oval Office that had been crudely altered with what appeared to be a black Sharpie marker, extending the hurricane's projected path into Alabama.
The incident escalated further when NOAA, under apparent political pressure, issued an unsigned statement supporting Trump's false claim and reprimanding the Birmingham office for its accurate correction. NOAA's own chief scientist later called this action a "violation of NOAA's policies and ethics."
While often treated as a humorous episode, SharpieGate revealed something deeply troubling: a president willing to pressure federal scientific agencies to validate his personal falsehoods, undermining public trust in weather forecasting during an active hurricane — a matter of life and death for millions.