It Took Trump Three Tweets to Spell "Heal" Right, and the Internet Lost It
As we all know by now, no one loves Twitter more than President Donald Trump. Unfortunately, he seems to be particularly prone toward misstating facts and making typos. After all, who can forget “covfefe”? (We won’t, probably ever.) But Saturday seemed to be an especially bad grammar day for him—and Twitter wasn’t about to let that go unnoticed.
Following the “Free Speech” rally that afternoon in Boston, and the counter-protests that took place there and across the country in solidarity with Charlottesville, Trump took to Twitter.
The president used the platform to issue a statement that was meant to be poignant, but the message was somewhat disrupted by an egregious error courtesy of one particular spelling bugaboo: the dreaded homophone. Here’s what he tweeted:
“Our great country has been divided for decade,but it will come together again.Sometimes protest is needed in order to heel, and heel we will!”
His tweet was promptly screen-captured, obviously, to live on in infamy.
The tweet was up for about half an hour before Trump (or a brave soul) noticed his mistake, and he quickly edited his statement.
Only he forgot—or still hadn’t noticed—the misspelling, so he only changed “for decade” to “for decades” and added the missing spaces.
As editors and teachers across the U.S. experienced a spontaneous, collective shudder, Trump tried again. Luckily, the third time was the charm.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/899008381226299392
Of course, plenty of observant Twitter users had already documented the previous attempts—so it didn’t take long before the jokes and memes were scrolling in.
https://twitter.com/cassandra17lina/status/899009886754942976
Even Merriam-Webster—which is not only a definitive reference for the English language but is also quickly carving out a Twitter reputation for being shady AF—chimed in:
https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster/status/899012820297281536
Next time maybe Trump will consult that dictionary first.
Related Stories:
—Donald Trump Is Being Sued for Blocking People on Twitter
—After Charlottesville, Trump Tweeted a Cartoon of a Train Hitting a CNN Reporter
—President Trump’s Delayed Response to Charlottesville Didn’t Go Unnoticed