Post by billhammond on Feb 9, 2017 14:08:32 GMT -5
WASHINGTON — The English language was unprepared for the attak. It was destined to loose. And, inevitably, it chocked.
The Trump White House on Monday night, attempting to demonstrate that the media had ignored terrorism, released a list of 78 “underreported” attacks. The list didn’t expose anything new about terrorist attacks, but it did reveal a previously underreported assault by the Trump administration on the conventions of written English.
Twenty-seven times, the White House memo misspelled “attacker” or “attackers” as “attaker” or “attakers.” San Bernardino lost its second “r.” “Denmark” became “Denmakr.”
I wish I could say this attack was unprecedented — or, as President Trump spells it, unpresidented. But I cannot say that. Nothing has distinguished Trump, his aides and his loyal supporters more than their shared struggle with spelling.
The morning after his inauguration, Trump tweeted: “I am honered to serve you, the great American People, as your 45th President of the United States!”
The honer is all ours, sir — just as it was exactly a year ago when you tweeted: “Every poll said I won the debate last night. Great honer!”
Soon after the latest honer boner, Trump received his first international visitor, the British prime minister, and the Trump White House, in its official schedule, spelled her name wrong not once and not twice but thrice. Theresa May became Teresa May. Britons noticed the gaffe, as well they would: Teresa May is the name of a British former soft-porn actress and busty nude model.
During the transition, Trump thundered on Twitter in a tweet that was so unpresidential it might be Freudian: “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters — rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act.”
But what was really unprecedented was Trump’s tweet on Hillary Clinton that included three misspellings in the space of 140 characters: “Hillary Clinton should not be given national security briefings in that she is a lose cannon with extraordinarily bad judgement & insticts.”
My insticts say Trump should enable auto-correct.
That might have prevented him from labeling Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a “lightweight chocker” and “always a chocker” after the senator choked in a GOP presidential debate.
Trump’s spelling chock was no shock. He attacked another primary opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., by tweeting: “Big shoker! People do not like Ted.”
It was no shoker, by contrast, that Trump also tweeted that Cruz “will loose big to Hillary.”
Again and again, Trump loosed his way. Ridiculous became “rediculous,” Phoenix became “Phoneix” (a felicitous phonics failure), and many paid attention when Trump proclaimed that he was not “bought and payed for.”
Close but not that bad. 
