Here we go again. The President of the United States — the leader of the free world, Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most powerful military, and man in charge of a nuclear arsenal capable of annihilating the planet’s entire human population several times over — made a silly mistake and is attempting to save face by claiming it was merely “sarcasm.”

The latest Trumpian faux pas came earlier Sunday on President Donald Trump‘s personal Twitter feed. On a day that has been positively exploding with tweet storms against the media, a favorite target for his ire, Trump posted several tweets demanding that journalists who won “Noble Prizes” for their reporting on “Russia, Russia, Russia” should be forced to give them back to the “Noble Committee.”

Trump was mocked immediately, enthusiastically, and viciously for the tweets, both for the repeated misspelling (the award is known as the Nobel Prize, named for the Swedish scientist and businessman who founded the awards) and for the fact that Nobel Prizes are awarded for outstanding contributions to humanity in several fields, including peace, chemistry, medicine, physics, literature — but not journalism.

The major prize for journalism is the Pulitzer, and the 2018 recipients included reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post for their reporting on Russian connections to the 2016 Trump campaign and efforts to interfere in the election.

After several hours of ridicule, Trump deleted the three tweets complaining about “Noble” Prizes. Yashar Ali, among others, had preserved the tweets with screenshots:

I’m assuming the president means Pulitzer Prize and not the Nobel Prize…not to mention the misspelling.

Do any Trump supporters want to defend errors like this? I just know if Biden did the same thing they’d be attacking him for it, and they’d be right to! pic.twitter.com/OvrxsavRTe

— Yashar Ali (@yashar) April 26, 2020

He then posted a new tweet, suddenly claiming he was just being sarcastic, that he never meant to reference the Nobel Prize and instead was just insulting the reporters’ lack of morality.

Does anybody get the meaning of what a so-called Noble (not Nobel) Prize is, especially as it pertains to Reporters and Journalists? Noble is defined as, “having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals.” Does sarcasm ever work?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2020

“Does sarcasm ever work?” asked Trump. It does not appear to have helped him at all today; all his new tweet accomplished was to reinvigorate the mocking from earlier in the day and inspire some new jokes.

If nothing else, we’ve learned that Donald Trump is having some serious trouble grasping the concept of sarcasm.

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) April 26, 2020

Trump now explaining his repeated misspellings of the Nobel prizes by claiming it was sarcasm.

Did not anticipate him going back to that one so soon after the disinfectant injection episode. https://t.co/rultmZ0V7f

— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) April 26, 2020

Trump tried (unsuccessfully) a nearly identical defense just over 48 hours ago, attempting to claim his discussion of curing coronavirus by injecting disinfectants and sunlight was just sarcasm.

Where’s Inigo Montoya when you need him?

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2W55igC