Reuters
- US President Donald Trump boasted about his spelling abilities at the White House’s first social media summit on Thursday.
- During a 50-minute address, Trump reflected on some of his Twitter gaffes, bemoaning how they are jumped on by the media.
- He added that he is "a good speller" but sometimes his "fingers aren’t as good as the brain."
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Donald Trump is really good at spelling — it’s just his fingers that can’t keep up.
That was the US president’s boast at the White House’s first social media summit on Thursday, during which he delivered a speech doubling down on claims that Twitter and Facebook are rife with "terrible bias."
In his 50-minute address, Trump reflected on some of the spelling and punctuation mistakes he has made on Twitter, bemoaning how they are jumped on by the media.
"If I have a spelling deal, they will put it on," the president said, drawing laughs from the audience. Impersonating the media, he said: "’Donald Trump spelled the word ‘the’ wrong. He doesn’t know how to spell ‘the.’ He spelled it T-H-I.’ Any kind of punctuation mistake, they put it on."
Read more: Trump and his White House have made some embarrassing spelling mistakes — here are the worst ones
Trump added that he’s actually very measured about tweeting his famous diatribes — it’s just that it doesn’t always translate to his fingers when typing them out on his phone. "I’m very, very careful. I’m actually a good speller, but everyone says the fingers aren’t as good as the brain," he explained.
You can watch Trump’s comments on his spelling mistakes here:
Trump has made some famous Twitter blunders since taking office in 2017, the most notorious of which was him appearing to mistype the word "coverage" in a tweet two years ago. "Despite the constant negative press covfefe," the president wrote.
The White House made light of this at the summit, printing out a Trump tweet in which he commented on the error. Former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka tweeted an image of the sign:
Among other gaffes, Trump has also spelled the name of his wife wrong, mangled idioms like scot-free, and had his posts spell-checked by Captain America himself, Chris Evans.
During Thursday’s summit, Trump also crowed about how engagement on his tweets explodes "like a rocket" after he posts them — as opposed to more traditional White House press releases. "If I put it out on social media, it’s like an explosion. Fox, CNN, crazy MSNBC," he said.
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See Also:
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets slammed with 2 lawsuits that accuse her of blocking people on Twitter
- A US appeals court has upheld a ruling that bars Trump from blocking people on Twitter because it’s discriminatory and unconstitutional
- Facebook and Twitter reportedly aren’t welcome at a coming White House social-media summit
Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Jake Kanter)