With America’s fate in his hands in October 1962, John F. Kennedy stood as a calm, resolute leader to avert a nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis. When terrorists slammed airplanes into New York City’s twin towers in September 2001, George W. Bush calmly provided the resolve and determination that a shaken nation needed to hear. When a nut case with guns murdered 27 people, including 20 school children, in Connecticut in December 2012, Barack Obama’s heartfelt words showed he shared the grief at a time the nation needed to be comforted.

When it was crucial to be presidential, these men were presidential. I can’t say that about Donald Trump. If they gave a course on leadership, Trump skipped it. When faced with a potential nuclear threat from North Korea in 2017, for example, Trump went into a name-calling rant that initially made things worse. After visiting hospitalized survivors of mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton last month, Trump bragged about how much the survivors and caregivers loved him.

The president should be the face of our nation in troubled times. In Trump’s case, that face is not a pretty one. It was never more evident than last week. As killer Hurricane Dorian flattened the Bahamas and took aim at the U.S eastern coastline, Trump failed to be a leader. Instead of offering condolences to our island neighbor and sympathy and hope to coastal residents, Trump – whose ego is bigger than Dorian’s eye – obsessed about Alabama.

Trump tweeted incorrectly that Alabama was in the path of the hurricane, prompting concerned calls from Alabamans to the National Weather Service in Birmingham. That office issued a notice that Alabama was not in Dorian’s path. Instead of admitting his mistake and moving on, Trump kept at it for a week. He even produced an obviously doctored map of the projected path of Dorian.

Trump used a black marker on the map to extend the path into Alabama, according to Bloomberg. Then, he proudly waved the doctored map at the television cameras to prove he was right. Finally, Trump apparently got the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, of which the weather service is a part, to issue a false statement saying he was right. The whole incident marked another low in Trump’s presidency.

As we have learned, Trump never admits to being wrong, no matter how big the lie – like when he said his inauguration crowd was the largest in history, windmills cause cancer, and Mexico will pay for the border wall.

The doctored map prompted memes on social media. In one meme, someone used a marker to draw stick people on a picture of Trump’s inauguration to make the crowd bigger. Another showed a photo of Trump with now-deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and an X through Epstein’s face to “prove” Trump didn’t know him.

Some critics called Trump’s actions his latest effort to divert attention from real issues, including the growing list of investigations of him and his private business. Others said it was just Trump again behaving like a petulant child to get his way. Trump supporters blamed the news media for making too big a deal of it. But it was a big deal. It went directly to Trump’s lack of fitness to be president. It went directly to his lack of empathy and his inability to get a grip on reality.

Can you imagine Trump standing up to an enemy over nuclear warheads in Cuba, then finding a way to avert disaster? I sure can’t. Would you bet your life on Trump in a life-or-death emergency? I sure wouldn’t.