Democrats seize on viral Sharpie hashtags to mock Trump map edit

Democrats are taking to social media using viral Sharpie-related hashtags to knock President Trump after he displayed a map of Hurricane Dorian’s trajectory that appeared to have been altered with black marker.

{mosads}About a day after Trump referred to a seemingly doctored map of Dorian’s original path that also looped in Alabama — a forecast he has repeatedly backed, despite meteorologists saying otherwise — several hashtags, including #SharpieGate, #TrumpSharpie and #SharpiePresident, trended on Twitter. Multiple Democratic lawmakers and high-profile officials were among those weighing in to mock the president.

“Altering official gov. forecasts is deceitful, dangerous, & oh yeah, ILLEGAL,” tweeted Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.). “Another example of a President who can’t TELL THE TRUTH.”

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), an outspoken critic of Trump, tweeted that the president “need[s] to apologize, mostly for lying about a stupid issue.”

“The problem @realdonaldtrump is that you’ve spent the last 3 years convincing everyone that the mainstream media is lying to them. Imagine someone from [South Carolina] seeing this and (trusting you more than the news) thinking there’s no need to prepare,” tweeted New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman.

Other Democrats have tweeted their rebukes of Trump, including Jon Cooper, who chairs the Democratic Coalition and worked for former President Obama’s White House campaign.

Thousands of Twitter users have also used the viral hashtags to post their own Sharpie-altered images to mock Trump. 

Trump raised eyebrows last week when he shared his own forecasts of Hurricane Dorian, tweeting Sunday that “in addition to Florida – South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.” But the National Weather Service in Birmingham quickly corrected the president, saying this was not the case.

Trump has since attacked ABC News for reporting that he made an error and continued to stand by his statements. On Thursday, he again doubled down on his remarks, insisting in a series of tweets that “certain models strongly suggested” Alabama and Georgia would be hit by the hurricane and that “what I said was accurate!”