President Trump is prone to misspellings in his tweets, intentionally or unintentionally drawing media attention to them, and his most recent mix-up has attracted the attention of a famous author, according to Business Insider .
In a tweet made Tuesday evening referencing his past contributions to the literary landscape, having written bestsellers such as Art of the Deal and Crippled America, President Trump misused “pour” when “pore” was called for.
Immediately deleting the tweet and replacing it with a version using the correct choice of word was not good enough for some critics, however, including author J.K. Rowling. Famous for having penned the Harry Potter novels, the English author and long-time anti-Trump commentator swiftly pounced on the misuse of the word and laughed as long as Twitter’s character count would textually allow her to.
Rowling would post five tweets on the matter, of which three were simple extended “haha” messages until the character limit had been reached.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha someone told him how to spell ‘pore’ hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha pic.twitter.com/Gf2xxKyFlp
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 3, 2018
Her followers largely loved the laughing tweet Rowling posted in response to the president’s error, though some disagreed with the scornful tone. One fan, in particular, their details redacted by Rowling during a retweet, threatened to burn their collection of Rowling’s books in response to her acerbic commentary on American politics.
Rowling also denied allegations from another fan on Twitter that she was blind to the parallels between the Ministry of Magic and the so-called “deep state” Trump and his supporters frequently indict as acting against the best interests of Americans with a dismissive, “Yeah, no.”
Yeah, no. pic.twitter.com/pQCqTo66YU
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 3, 2018
In the initial tweet, President Trump also alluded to having written several bestsellers himself. One biographer, Tim O’Brien, having written Trump Nation in 2005 and further having been the target of a dismissed lawsuit launched by the man who is now serving as president, claimed that all of Trump’s books were ghostwritten, according to Business Insider . Tim O’Brien is currently a political analyst and opinion writer for Bloomberg .
Even the folks at Merriam-Webster’s social media department couldn’t resist joining in on the fun, summoning a small bit of a shade to throw out on the subject themselves. In a somewhat passive-aggressive quip that is hard to consider to be purely circumstantial coincidence, the dictionary merchants took to the social media platform to throw out a few definitions.
‘pore over’ ?”to read or study very carefully”
‘pour over’ ??”to make expensive coffee”
‘comb over’ ????”to comb hair from the side of the head to cover the bald spot” https://t.co/br20fgpmAb
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) July 3, 2018
The ones they chose to enumerate and elaborate upon? What is meant by the phrases “to pour over,” “to pore over,” and finally to “comb over.”
For his part, President Trump has so far deigned not to respond to J.K. Rowling on the matter.
