Trump is leaving a permanent mark

On Wednesday, Trump displayed a hurricane forecast map in the Oval Office. It appeared crudely altered as if with, say, a bold-tipped black marker, to back up his insistence, that Hurricane Dorian had presented a serious threat to Alabama, days after it had turned toward the East Coast.

“A Sharpie-writer forces others to pay closer attention,” noted Michael D’Antonio. “The tool that the White House selected — it is unclear whether or not Trump himself made the alteration — to make an impression seems to reveal more than Trump might have wanted. Like a grade-schooler’s attempt to turn a report card D into a B the line added to the weather map only drew more attention to the reality the scrawl was intended to cover-up. Ill-informed about the hurricane he was supposedly monitoring, our President offered not the truth but a forgery.”