Joe Sommerlad
Mar 19, 2019
Donald Trump is known for his Twitter outbursts and on Monday launched his latest: an astonishingly crass attack on Barack Obama's former vice-president.
" Joe Biden got tongue tied over the weekend when he was unable to properly deliver a very simple line about his decision to run for President. Get used to it, another low I.Q. individual!" Trump taunted in a tweet.
The sneer came in reference to Biden, 76, misspeaking during his keynote address to Democrats in Delaware on Saturday night, attempting to trail his intention to run as a presidential candidate in the 2020 election but saying instead he had:
The most progressive record of anybody running for the... anybody who would run... Of anybody who would run.
A simple enough stumble, Trump could nevertheless not resist mocking his potential opponent over his "low IQ".
According to The Hill, the president has used the same insult at least three times previously: to discredit MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters and actor Robert De Niro.
But coming from a man who has tweeted about "smocking guns", "hamberders" and "covfefe", this is pretty rich indeed.
Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Trevor Noah was quick off the draw in replying to the president, posting a video compiling numerous examples of Donald Trump getting it wrong.
This was expert trolling: "cap-sicle", "sahhven", "con-ducking", "addreth", "renoversh", "pro-hess", "skorj", "crngratulate", "ObamNa", "Chris response", "defensive mishiz and missiles", "midtowm and midterm year", "anonommess", "April of 20,014"... the list goes on. Pick your favourite.
As indicated by the collection above, Trump frequently makes a mistake when reading from a teleprompter but, rather than correct himself or admit it, simply barrels onwards undaunted.
Here's a quick round-up of some of his most awkward blunders.
His referring to Apple CEO Tim Cook as 'Tim Apple'
Earlier this month, Trump made one of his most celebrated gaffes when he referred to the boss of consumer electronics behemoth Apple as "Tim Apple", rather than Tim Cook, during a meeting of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board.
I mean, you’ve really put a big investment in our country. We appreciate it very much, Tim Apple.
The blunder inspired a thousand memes and was met with glee by his detractors.
He has form in this area, having previously referred to Marilyn Hewson, CEO of aerospace and defence giant Lockheed Martin, as "Marilyn Lockheed", apparently unable to imagine a world in which people work for companies they were not born into.
When he was roundly mocked over the "Tim Apple" slip, he tweeted angrily about it as yet more "disparaging fake news".
His celebrating the 'abolition of human rights'
Speaking at a National Prayer Breakfast in Washington at the start of February, President Trump addressed his guests on "America's greatest achievements:
Since the founding of our nation, many of our greatest strides, from gaining our independence to abolition of civil rights, to extending the vote for women, have been led by people of faith and started in prayer.
The fact that the slip - Freudian or otherwise - coincided with Black History Month made matters even worse.
His reference to the ancient Himalayan territories of 'Nipple' and 'Button'
The president apparently mispronounced the names of both Nepal and Bhutan in a White House intelligence briefing last month and expressed a belief that both were part of India.
Time's national security correspondent John Walcott revealed the gaffe in an article on the president's "willful ignorance" towards international affairs, provoking hysterics from CNN interview Brooke Baldwin when she interviewed the journalist on the matter.
The time he talked about 'sacrifice for the furniture of the children'
President Trump told the Values Voter Summit in Washington on 13 October 2017 how hard the average American family works, saying: "They sacrifice everyday for the furniture and future of their children."
His meeting with the 'president' of the Virgin Islands
That same day, Trump had already referred to having had a meeting with the "president of the Virgin Islands" in October 2017, when he meant to say the governor.
The Virgin Islands being a US territory, meeting with their president would mean having a meeting with himself.
That time he invented a country
Addressing the United Nations in September 2017, Trump managed to invent a completely fictional country while speaking on the subject of healthcare in Africa.
"In Guinea and Nigeria, you fought a horrifying Ebola outbreak... Nambia's health system is increasingly self-sufficient," he told baffled delegates from the continent, exchanging confused glances at the apparent conflation of Namibia and Zambia.
You can't help wondering if he's since seen Marvel's Black Panther and what he might say about vibranium mining in Wakanda or the secret city-state's booming tech sector.
When President Trump later made reference to "s***hole countries", the Zambia Tourism Agency was quick to capitalise on the insult.
In spite of all of the above, Donald Trump remains amazingly thin-skinned and touchy regarding his numerous errors.
The president should still be above scoring such cheap points off his rivals - especially given his own high hit-rate for gaffes - but he's by no means the first to make a fool of himself on the world stage.
From John F Kennedy apparently declaring to an amused West German public in 1963 that he was a doughnut ("Ich bin ein Berliner!") to George W Bush getting confused about a famous old proverb ("Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me twice... you can't get fooled again"), mistakes are part of life in the Oval Office and add some much needed humour to the often tense business of global politics.
More: Trump insists he's the best writer. Here are 11 of his most embarrassing tweets
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