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Nature's fury.
In September of 2019,
a storm was brewing in the Atlantic.
NEWSMAN: Hurricane Dorian making its way
toward the United States.
Forecasters expecting it to make
a dramatic turn to the north.
I'm not sure that I've ever even heard of a Category 5.
I knew it existed.
A category 5 is something that, uh,
I don't know that I've ever even heard the term,
other than I know it's there.
WOOD: But Hurricane Dorian was nothing compared to the tempest
about to blow the roof off the Oval Office:
Hurricane Donald.
NEWSMAN: The National Weather Service
had to scramble to correct misinformation
from President Trump about Dorian.
NEWSWOMAN: President Trump tweeted:
"In addition to Florida-- South Carolina, North Carolina,
"Georgia and Alabama will most likely be hit
much harder than anticipated."
NEWSMAN: The National Weather Service
corrected the president, saying...
WOOD: Suddenly, America was caught between two claims.
But who to believe?
Scientists who have dedicated their lives
to the study of weather patterns?
Or a man who thinks wind is caused
by birds flapping too hard?
This is a tough hurricane.
One of the wettest we've ever seen
from the standpoint of water.
WOOD: As the people of Alabama braced
for either massive destruction
or slightly overcast skies,
there was still time to avoid disaster.
All President Trump had to say was,
"Sorry, I was wrong.
The hurricane is not going to hit Ala..."
Alabama's gonna get a piece of it, it looks like.
It is a very, very powerful hurricane.
A great place-- it's called Alabama--
and Alabama could even be in for...
at least some very strong winds
and something more than that, it could be.
WOOD: That's right, although the experts tried
to make Trump understand,
he had already boarded up his ears.
Hurricane Dorian had moved on,
narrowly missing Alabama by 600 miles.
But Hurricane Donald was just forming.
After seeing an ABC News report on his mistake,
Trump gained new strength, tweeting...
It was a direct attack on science...
and also on Twitter user, Jonathan Carl,
who is a Kentucky pastor and not ABC News anchor, Jon Carl,
an innocent victim of Hurricane Donald.
Over the next 36 hours,
Hurricane Donald seemed to die down--
but then it returned...
(drumbeat echoes)
...this time, with a Sharpie.
NEWSWOMAN: In a White House video released Wednesday,
Trump displays a modified
National Hurricane Center forecast.
The graphic appears to have been altered with a Sharpie
to indicate a risk the storm would move into Alabama.
I know that Alabama was in the original forecast.
They actually gave that a 95% chance.
WOOD: That's right, Donald Trump tried to redraw a map
with a Sharpie!
Have some respect for our intelligence.
At least learn Photoshop.
But what if the culprit wasn't Trump at all?
REPORTER: That map that you showed us today
looked like it almost had, like, a Sharpie...
I don't know. I don't know.
WOOD: It was a real mystery.
Who could have possibly taken a Sharpie to a hurricane map?
It had to be someone with an almost pathological obsession
with using the permanent markers,
as if they needed their marks to be the boldest,
the loudest, the most permanent.
But who? There would be no way
to know for certain.
The storm raged for days, growing in strength
until it became a Category 5 tweet storm,
with government agencies
that most Americans had never even heard of
transformed into hazardous projectiles by the gale.
NEWSMAN: Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross,
threatened to fire top employees at NOAA on Friday
after the agency's Birmingham office
contradicted Trump's claim.
WOOD: What began as one bad tweet
had escalated into a full-scale political scandal
with not one, not two
but three government investigations.
Like a Sharpie drawing a fake path of a hurricane,
it's a scandal that simply can't be erased
all because there was a hurricane over a year ago
that had a five to 20% chance of hitting Alabama
but ultimately didn't.