Donald Trump mocked in memes over map ‘doctored with sharpie marker'

In a public update on the storm, the US President used an official weather map which appeared to feature a hand-drawn half-circle, extending the storm’s zone of impact to the southeastern state of Alabama.

The US president has been criticised over his repeated claims that the devastating tropical storm could hit Alabama, despite the National Weather Service confirming it would not.

After a White House video showed Mr Trump pointing to the map, with its visible sharpie-sketched addition, a flurry of “Sharpiegate” memes began streaming onto Twitter.

Donald Trump holds a chart showing the original projected track of Hurricane Dorian that appears to have been extended with a black line
REUTERS

One featured a picture of Mount Rushmore, the national monument famous for its granite sculptures of former presidents, with an outline of Mr Trump drawn on.

Another image showed a crude sharpie wall, captioned: “Wall = done, losers”, in reference to Mr Trump’s Mexican border wall ambitions.

Others showed Mr Trump with enlarged sharpie hands, or with extra centimetres added to his height.

And others doctored photos of the president’s wife Melania to show her smiling alongside her husband.

Asked later whether the map really had been doctored with pen, the president said: "I don't know, I don't know.”

However, he has stuck firmly by his insistence Alabama was due to be “hit or grazed”.

Accusing the media of deceiving the public in its coverage of his meteorological error, he tweeted on Thursday: “Alabama was going to be hit or grazed, and then Hurricane Dorian took a different path (up along the East Coast).

"The Fake News knows this very well. That’s why they’re the Fake News!”

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