Pete Buttigieg Pete ButtigiegBillionaire who donated to Trump in 2016 donates to Biden The Hill's Morning Report - Sponsored by Facebook - GOP closes ranks to fill SCOTUS vacancy by November Buttigieg stands in as Pence for Harris's debate practice MORE on Thursday said that he felt "sorry" for President Trump Donald John TrumpFederal prosecutor speaks out, says Barr 'has brought shame' on Justice Dept. Former Pence aide: White House staffers discussed Trump refusing to leave office Progressive group buys domain name of Trump's No. 1 Supreme Court pick MORE after he displayed a map that appeared to have altered Hurricane Dorian's original path projection with a marker.

"I’m really worried about that," the South Bend, Ind., mayor and Democratic presidential candidate said on CNN's "New Day."

"I feel sorry for the president, and that is not the way we should feel about the most powerful figure in this country," he said. "Somebody on whose wisdom and judgment our lives literally depend."

"I feel sorry for the President," Pete Buttigieg says on President Trump appearing to show an altered Hurricane Dorian trajectory map. “It makes you feel a kind of pity for everybody involved” https://t.co/jB9dijv8yU pic.twitter.com/ENma54ygE9 — CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) September 5, 2019

"I don’t know if he felt it necessary to pull out a sharpie and change the map. I don’t know if it was one of his aides believed they had to do that in order to protect his ego," he added. "No matter how you cut it, this is an unbelievably sad state of affairs for our country. If our presidency is not in good shape, then our country is not in good shape. And on one level it’s laughable, on another it is exactly why we got to do something different."

ADVERTISEMENT

The comments from Buttigieg came just a day after Trump showed off a map displaying Hurricane Dorian's projected path during an Oval Office briefing on the government's efforts to address the storm. The map displayed the storm's expected path and appeared to include a marker-drawn addition to indicate that it would hit the southern edge of Alabama.

"And that would have affected a lot of other states," Trump said while reviewing the image. "But that was the original chart. It was going to hit not only Florida, but Georgia. It could have — it was going toward the Gulf. That was what was originally projected, and it took a right turn, and ultimately, hopefully we’re going to be lucky."

Many observers on Wednesday pointed out that the National Hurricane Center's projections didn't include such a shift in the storm's path. Others noted that it was illegal to falsify a national weather forecast.

The scrutiny came as Trump continued to defend his public statement last weekend that Alabama could be affected by Hurricane Dorian. After Trump sent a tweet issuing the warning on Sunday, the National Weather Service in Birmingham tweeted that Alabama would not be affected by Dorian.

Hours after the Oval Office briefing, Trump tweeted an image from forecast models from the early stages of the hurricane overlaid onto a map.

"As you can see, almost all models predicted it to go through Florida also hitting Georgia and Alabama," he said. "I accept the Fake News apologies!"

Despite Trump's claim, only some outlier models showed that Hurricane Dorian would reach Alabama.

He doubled down on his claims early Thursday morning, writing in a series of tweets that “certain models strongly suggested” Alabama and Georgia would be hit by the hurricane.