Donald Trump had a little bit of trouble with his American flag worksheet in a visit to a children’s hospital Friday, drawing the Russian flag’s colors instead.
On Friday, the president and first lady Melania Trump flew to Ohio to visit a hospital for children affected by the opioid epidemic. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer noted, the pair toured the medical unit and then met with some older children who were drawing worksheets with American flags. The very large Trump sat in the child-sized chairs and joined them, but seemed to have some trouble with the colors.
As photos from the event showed, Trump started by making a red stripe and then adding a blue one. The only problem is that the American flag only has red and white stripes — meaning what he drew was actually the Russian flag.
As pictures of Trump’s flag mis-coloring hit the internet, it drew plenty of attention, including a write-up in Slate .
“Yet things didn’t go so well for Trump this time. The president and his wife joined the children in an arts-and-crafts activity that involved coloring in the American flag. But it seems Trump didn’t quite color his flag right. A photo posted on Twitter seems to show that the president colored in a blue stripe on the U.S. flag.”
Trump is either really really ignorant, or he’s really really unpatriotic!
No one colors the America flag with blue stripes unless it’s really the Russian flag! pic.twitter.com/TNC4cnyYE4
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) August 25, 2018
Many took the wrongly drawn American flag as a sign that Trump doesn’t have the same respect for the flag that he seems to demand from others, especially NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem, which Trump sees as disrespectful to the flag.
This is not the first time that Trump has been accused of failing to practice what he preaches. Last year, he was sitting down with Fox News host Sean Hannity for an interview at an Air National Guard hangar in Pennsylvania when a band started playing “Retreat,” a song that accompanies and end-of-the-day flag lowering ceremony. Though it is tradition to stand at attention during the song, Trump instead asking jokingly if the song was for him.
“What a nice sound that is,” Trump said, via the Washington Examiner . “Are they playing that for you or for me?”
“They’re playing that in honor of his ratings,” Trump replied to his own question, referring to Hannity. “He’s beating everybody.”
It’s not clear if there is any hidden meaning to the flag-coloring episode, but Donald Trump may want to spend more time studying the American flag and its colors.
