Instead of admitting to the mistake and clarifying that he meant to type Georgia, Trump doubled down, saying that he was right based on the outdated information. Wednesday, Trump's White House revealed a map in which someone had drawn in Sharpie, expanding the outdated hurricane map so that it appeared as though Trump was right.
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace couldn't believe the pettiness had reached such a level of absurdity that Trump would perpetuate his own mistake by creating a false narrative around it.
"To me it’s the most important thing to do today, to show there’s no — there’s nothing too small for Trump to lie about," Wallace said. "There’s nothing he won’t quadruple down on. And let me tell you, I lived in Tallahassee, I lived in Florida, they’re really good at preparing for hurricanes but they rely on accurate information. And it’s no joke to mess with a forecast. So, you know, it might seem like a line with a Sharpie but I think the intersection of a president that rails against fake news all day every day and a storm that is hitting this country today and truly jeopardizes people’s lives and livelihoods is a serious enough thing to stop and say what is going on?"
Commentator John Heilmann noted that since the beginning of Trump's administration there has been speculation that the president's lies would come back to hurt him or hurt the country.
"Trump has been incredibly lucky in that the chaos and the lies that have devalued his currency, the most fundamental currency a president has, which is trust, that they have not had significant real-world consequences outside of Puerto Rico, which is obviously there have been disasters, there’s obviously mass shootings and a traditional body count in this presidency," Heilmann began. "What we haven’t seen is the moment expected, there would be a real-time crisis with Trump’s lies and ignorance -- and the way in which he defiles and devalues the most — not just the trust he has but the stage on which that trust resides historically, places like the podium and White House briefing room, Oval Office behind the president’s desk, that we would see this moment, where it would happen."
Luckily, Trump's lie might cause some panic, he said, but it won't hurt anyone.
"But this gives you a taste of what it would be like given Trump can't not lie about everything," he continued. "And then when caught in a lie, to the elaborateness, the baroque quality of the reinforcement, 95 percent he’s citing, this is not just Alabama might have gotten hit but Alabama was going to be hit. It was 95 percent certainty that Alabama was going to be hit, it was going through there. Everybody thought it. All of those things are demonstrable lies. And he’s not just doubling down on the original lie, he’s exaggerating and making the lie bigger."
Wallace recalled a moment at a MAGA rally where Trump outright told his audience not to believe what they "see and hear," because he's the one telling the truth. It harkens back to an idiom frequently associated with Trump, "Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes."
Los Angeles Times reporter Eli Stokols said that it goes along with the Trump narrative where he tells his supporters not to believe the media and that everyone but him is wrong.
But it was Democratic strategist Basil Smikle that warned of the worst way in which Trump's lies can harm Americans and the country.
"When I think political trust and political authority -- when voters go to the polls, they think about policy preferences, what’s important to them but they also think on their elected leaders as someone who’s going to act authoritatively in moments of crisis," Smikle said. "So, when you have this president -- I would want to call it fake news if the consequences were not so tragic for citizens -- but when he does something like this, it makes you wonder can I trust the president in the time of an emergency to give me the correct information so I could mobilize not just myself and families, as you pointed out earlier but law enforcement as well."
Watch the full panel below:
