Here We Go 'Round the Prickly Pear

Trump tried to dump the Alabama story (finally!) by posting three suspiciously similar tweets about his concern for North and South Carolina and Georgia.  But then this happened:

“It’s remarkable that more harm hasn’t come of it. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.” https://t.co/GIrIXOMPiB

— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) September 6, 2019

President Trump called a Fox News correspondent into the Oval Office to argue he wasn't wrong about Alabama https://t.co/kOLUGDpXrA

— CNN (@CNN) September 6, 2019

Nine tweets. Five maps. A sharpie-doctored Oval Office display. A national security council statement. Lots of presidential griping. As Dorian crashes into SC, POTUS is focused on defending his inaccurate claim about a threat to Alabama. W/@ToluseO: https://t.co/3MWoO3mMSr

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) September 6, 2019

Which is just gonna spin up the merry-go-round again, and don't think it won't:

A White House aide familiar with the Oval Office meeting with Roberts said that Trump also voiced his displeasure about Fox News anchor Shepard Smith's skeptical reporting about the Alabama map.

The President summoned Roberts "to hit back at Shepard Smith," the White House aide said.

You can expect that to continue now that other news outlets have weighed in.  And WaPo has now confirmed the obvious (next up:  Water really is wet!):

It was Trump who used a black Sharpie to mark up an official National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map, which he displayed during an Oval Office briefing on Wednesday, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations,” the newspaper reported. 

And AP just wants to keep up us up at night:

Trump’s relentless justifications of his erroneous warnings that Hurricane Dorian was threatening Alabama on Sunday, which created days of ridicule and skepticism, are just the latest example of the president’s lifelong reluctance to admit an error, no matter how innocuous.

His fervent, dayslong pushback has displayed not only his prolonged focus on a personal spat but his willingness, notably again late on Thursday, to deploy government staff and resources to justify an inaccurate claim. Presidential proclamations can move markets, rattle world capitals and, in this case, unnecessarily alarm the residents of a state. Trump’s relationship with the truth and accountability threatened to, yet again, diminish the weight of any president’s words.
....
Trump has made a career of not acknowledging errors, going full steam ahead even when caught in an error or lie.

“I think apologizing’s a great thing, but you have to be wrong,” he said in a 2016 interview. “I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I’m ever wrong.”

If he were the drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, we could go back to ignoring him.  As it is, cleaning the Augean stables is gonna be child's play compared to following this guy as POTUS.