Presidential candidate Marianne Williamson credits ‘the power of the mind’ for pushing Hurricane Dorian off of the U.S. coast

Sep. 4--This is not the shoreline you're looking for.

Spiritual guru and presidential candidate Marianne Williamson suggested hurricane Dorian, which killed at least seven people in the Bahamas this week, didn't make landfall as a Category 5 storm in the U.S. because of mind control.

"Millions of us seeing Dorian turn away from land is not a wacky idea; it is a creative used of the mind," Williamson wrote in a Wednesday tweet that she soon after deleted. That tweet also called for "Two minutes of prayer, visualization, meditation for those in the way of the storm."

After removing that tweet from her Twitter feed, Williamson went with a more conservative message asking that people pray for those who stand to be effected by the storm before it either dissipates or heads off to sea.

"Prayers for the people of the Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas," she wrote in her new tweet. "May the peace of God be upon them and their hearts be comforted as they endure the storm."

Followers of the 67-year-old self-help author weighed-in on Williamson's tweets, with some wondering how prayers are different from any other kind of wishful thinking. Skeptics wondered if Williamson was implying that people in the Bahamas, where Dorian did tremendous damage this week, weren't trying hard enough to wish the dangerous water and winds away.

Williamson took exception with at least one reporter who drew attention to the tweet she'd deleted.

"Since you obviously want to debunk, counter or mischaracterize anything I do, would you like to have an honest and fair public dialogue?" she tweeted at New York magazine contributor Yashar Ali, who pointed out that she'd deleted the earlier message. "Since I'm neither crazy, irresponsible nor dangerous, I would appreciate the opportunity to counter the caricature."

Ali, who'd simply reposted the tweet she'd taken down alongside the caption "Marianne Williamson has deleted this tweet," seemed perplexed.

"With respect to your offer to have an 'public dialogue,' thank you but I am reserving my time to speak to candidates who qualified for the debate," he snapped back.

Williamson, who is polling under 2% for the Democratic nomination, fell short of the threshold to participate in the party's debate next month.

Williamson's controversial suggestion for fending off hurricanes wouldn't be the strangest utterance attributed to a politician since Dorian took shape. According to Axios, President Trump inquired about using nuclear weapons to blow up a hurricane in discussions with Homeland Security. Trump, who claimed in June to know "a lot about nuclear," has denied that report.

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