Trump Just Tagged The Wrong Person On Twitter & We All Know That Feeling
On Friday, Oct. 27, the president committed one of the most dreaded of Twitter missteps. Donald Trump tagged the wrong Lee Greenwood on Twitter in trying to wish the singer a happy birthday. People on the platform had a lot to say about the fumble.
Trump was attempting to tag the particular Lee Greenwood who is the 75-year-old singer most known for his song, "God Bless the U.S.A." Instead, he tagged @leegreenwood83, a New York-based lawyer whose bio describes him as,
Lawyer focused on Washington DC sports - all things Redskins, Caps, Nationals, Wizards. A current New Yorker who maintains his DC roots through Twitter.
It's almost impressive that Trump managed to tag this particular Greenwood, given that the first name that comes up in the Twitter search box — and the one with the verified account — is the singer's. How is it even possible to miss that? (The singer's account, as one might ascertain to be the more logical choice, is @TheLeeGreenwood.)
More hilarious still is that the Greenwood Trump tagged doesn't appear to be exactly on board with everything Trump stands for. A tweet from January 29 suggests his participation in a march protesting the travel ban.
MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin caught the awkward circumstance and pointed it out on Twitter.
Back in July 2016, Greenwood also retweeted a tweet by Jon Lubin in which the latter appeared to poke fun at Trump in sharing an Anchorman gif:
The lawyer Greenwood seemed to have fun with the mess-up. He replied to a tweet by Jake Tapper, saying,
And when Josh Greenman, editor of the New York Daily News, tweeted about it, Greenwood joked about himself.
Trump, apparently realizing the mistake, deleted the tweet, which promted the Citizens for Ethics handle to share:
It's your nightmare that it'll happen to you, but it's hilarious when it happens to someone else — or, as the case was, two someone elses. After Trump shared his tweet, Fox News apparently also tagged the wrong account, per the Daily News. Like Trump, the news organization also deleted its Greenwood tweet.
Trump sent a correct tweet later Friday morning, and Fox News shared it.
But because the universe is a strange place, Fox News, just an hour later, shared a link to a news story about Trump tagging the wrong Greenwood. (There's no mention, by the way, of the fact that they also made the same error.)
Matthew Gertz of Media Matters did some sleuthing to show how, as the timing and content of all his Friday morning tweets suggest, Trump was watching a delayed recording of Fox & Friends when he shared the Greenwood tweet.
Other users pointed out how Trump's latest error is the icing on a cake in some ways for an administration marked by ahistoric turmoil and setbacks. It was also a slap in the face — though an innocuous one compared to his tweets that were considered declarations of war — for those who would like to see the president show more restraint and discipline on the platform.
Friday's faux pas was not the first time Trump has made public errors on a platform that he can't seem to stop using. It's not exactly a secret that the president operates with a styling all his own: random all-caps, half-sentences, odd spacing, excessive exclamation points and elipses — the list goes on.
Aesthetic preferences aside, he's also infamous for his [many] grammatical and spelling typos on Twitter.
"Covfefe" was the tip of the iceberg. Trump undoubtedly inspired some irritated English teachers to devote class time to reviewing homonyms after mixing up their and there, too and to, (both errors in the same tweet!) and heel and heal. And lest we forget that one time back in December 2016 when he made up a word: "unpresidented." (Autocorrect is kicking in as I type this.)
Eventually Trump reposted his original message, tagging the intended Greenwood.
Let's just hope that out of all this, the New York Greenwood is having an interesting day.
