A Kentucky pastor said he was “a victim of a drive-by tweet” from President Trump, who mistakenly sent a post his way while attacking a network news anchor with a similar name.
Jonathan Carl, the lead pastor of South Fork Baptist Church in Hodgenville, Kentucky, about 55 miles south of Louisville, said he wasn’t much of a social media maven but that pals pointed out that Trump had tweeted an angry missive at him instead of at ABC News’ Jonathan Karl.
“I’m not on Twitter too often, so somebody on Facebook gave me a heads up,” Carl, an Iraq war vet, told the Louisville Courier Journal. “I just had a laugh. I’m a victim of a drive-by tweet!”
The commander-in-chief was fulminating over Karl’s report on his comments that Hurricane Dorian could threaten Alabama when he fired off the misdirected post.
“Such a phony hurricane report by lightweight reporter @jonathancarl of @ABCWorldNews,” Trump tweeted Monday night in one of a series of posts defending his assertion that Alabama could be imperiled.
“I suggested yesterday at FEMA that, along with Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, even Alabama could possibly come into play, which WAS true.”
Trump had tweeted on Sunday that Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama would “most likely be hit much harder than anticipated” by Dorian.
Shortly after that tweet, the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Alabama, tweeted that Alabama “will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.”
“We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east.”
Trump also told reporters at the White House later Sunday that “Alabama is going to get a piece of it, looks like. But it can change its course again and it could go back more toward Florida.”
The tweet to Carl was replaced within minutes with Karl’s name, and the 39-year-old pastor — whose church is located in LaRue County, which Trump won with 75 percent of the vote, compared to 20 percent for Hillary Clinton — was gracious about the error.
But he also urged the president — and those he targets — to show some heart on Twitter and not just vent their spleens.
“Politics aside, I’ve seen a lot of the stuff the president puts out there. The people who receive that from him, you get the crazy responses,” Carl told the paper.
“There is a lot of hatred out there in the world, and it’s sad when somebody’s that negative and picking on people pretty consistently.”
Carl said Trump’s tweetstorms draw attention away from the people “who are really suffering right now in the Bahamas” and others on the East Coast preparing for the worst from the massive storm.
“People should choose kindness instead of being hateful. It goes a long way,” Carl said, adding that he did not feel angry with the president, only sad for him.