Sharpie gate is absurd There's a real hurricane going on. That's caused massive destruction, a death toll that's likely to rise and yet President Trump tweeted about Alabama at least five times on Wednesday alone There's something President Trump can't let go insisting he was right when he said last weekend that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama hard days after projections should it would give the state of past day after day defending the inaccuracy then things escalated to peak absurdity when someone was caught doctoring a weak gold National Weather Service map with a Sharpie in the Oval Office to prove the President's point all of which caused an Exchange that seemed straight out of the and that map that you told us today look like it's almost like a Sharpie I don't know I don't know Not convinced well, then the White House tried to explain away the whole snap food by saying that one of the officials in the Oval Office use the black marker unprompted to show that the hurricane could have been way worse A source familiar with the briefing notably did not deny the President Trump was that official now, the Washington Post is reporting and anonymous White House official saying it was indeed President Trump but let's do some smoothing ourselves to solve this mystery of Sharpie Gate First who in the Oval Office loves him some Sharpies I'll give you a guess Yes, that's the President's customized black Sharpie with his signature on the side and he told Axios that he asked the company to make one form when he decided that official government pens didn't write well So I called up the folks at choppy and I said, Do me a favor Can you make the pan and black make it look rich And he said Not only we can do that. We can put your signature And of course, we know that the President has long been fond of writing quick notes with said Sharpie featuring his slashing signature to congressman and heads of state like Canada's Justin Trudeau You might have also seen Work on edits to public statements like that time, he wrote There was no collusion on this effort to clean up the fallout from the Helsinki Summit where he failed to stand up to Putin about election meddling while also notably crossing out a line that he would bring quote anyone involved in that meddling to Justice or who could forget his talking points written on a card when meeting with the victims of the Parkland shooting in which he reminded himself to say I hear you Trump's Sharpie habit was in effect long before the White House like when he reportedly kept sending the former editor of Vanity Fair Graydon Carter pictures of his hands Circled with a gold sharpy and what Carter described as a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers in a parent rebuttal to a decades old description of Trump as a short fingered Bulgarian look imagining Trump without a Sharpie and a grudge is like imagining picasa without a paint brush or John Wayne without a gun so we could choose to believe what the President says or own lying eyes or the National Hurricane Center map, showing the path where Trump started his Alabama rant or the Birmingham The National Weather Service, which tried to assure folks there were no danger despite the President's remarks or even a Fox News meteorologist to called the Sharpie announced map in the Oval Office inaccurate misleading and fake But Sharpie gate is not about the sharpie It's about the President's refusal to recognize reality because this is really about the absurd lengths President Trump will go to to avoid anything resembling an apology for a simple mistake It's about the way At anybody who gets in the way of his war with the truth and that's a reality