Trump’s unpresidented error

Trump’s unpresidented error

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norman lebrecht

December 17, 2016

The incoming US head of state tweeted today:

China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters — rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act

Why waste time at school learning how to spell?

Think of all the teachers he may sack.

Comments

  • Elizabeth Owen says:

    Twit is going to rule by Tweet how pathetic.

  • Excentrifugal Forz says:

    When will people realize that the “presidential election” has for decades been a TV show to maintain the illusion of choice, to keep the dumb electorate voting and hoping, and to prevent them from realizing that there is only one agenda: Wall street, the megabanks, the military industrial complex and global corporations. Which cardboard cutout is sitting in the White House, including the Twitter messages, is completely irrelevant.

    • daveferre says:

      Exactly right. And not only the USA.

    • Olassus says:

      That’s right. But it is now widely known.

      Trump, being different and not a lawyer, politician or word man, but nonetheless educated, may grapple with Wall Street. We will see.

      Not sure why Norman, notoriously typo-prone himself, wants to run a non-musical post bashing our new president.

      • David Osborne says:

        Because that’s not a typo, it’s ignorance.

        • Olassus says:

          But Trump is not ignorant — without disagreeing that this was a word problem and not a typo. People are smart and savvy in different ways. Let’s see what Trump accomplishes, and let’s preserve Slipped Disc as a place we can come to free of politics.

          • William Safford says:

            Trump is profoundly ignorant, as anyone who sat through his debate performances knows.

            Just one example: in one of the Republican primary debates, Trump made it clear that he had no idea what the nuclear triad is!

            It saddens and disgusts me that my fellow Americans voted for such an incompetent, unqualified, and unprepared person as Trump. And that’s without touching on his his misogyny, his bigotry, his fascist leanings, his intemperate personality, and his xenophobia. And even this is an incomplete list.

    • Pamela Brown says:

      Though in some respects that seems to be true, look at what Pres. Obama has done in the space of 8 years — completely turned healthcare upside down and much of the rest of the country as well.

      • Sue says:

        It’s difficult to disagree with this. And he’s never been satirized (to my knowledge) for a single moment on television or in any medium. Perhaps it’s the special treatment for a person from a particular race – which is, itself, racism.

        • Bruce says:

          There have been a LOT of satirical cartoons about Obama, if that counts. (Michael Ramirez is featured regularly in my local paper – here’s an example: http://www.michaelpramirez.com/obama-cure.html)

          Mostly, though, I’d say the reason is not because of his race but because (a) comedians mostly tend to be liberals, and (b) they don’t find him ridiculous.

        • Scott Fields says:

          It’s bizarre to claim that the Obamas have escaped saturization. Right-wing radio and television have mocked Obama to no end, often combined with attempts at humor. They’ve also used terms such as “Baby Mama” to refer to his wife.

      • BB says:

        Not to mention his invention of a nonexistent tongue called “Austrian.” Or his visits to 57 states. Or his reference to a Navy “corpseman.”

      • William Safford says:

        True — and now Trump is about to undo all the excellent work that Obama did. He’ll enrich his fellow billionaires and stiff the very suckers who voted him into office.

        How sad.

    • Marshall says:

      At least with the Bocelli singing for Trump there was some musical connection, but now Lebrecht is going blatantly political-why? I don’t recall him being so feverish about Brexit?

      I agree with you about the illusion of choice, but that is what makes Trump so interesting-and why the left and right establishment went crazy about his success. He isn’t really a Republican-hijacked the party-and has upset the cozy back and forth the Dems and Repubs have had going. We’ll see.

      I played a little game by asking what did Bernie Sanders’ campaign rallies, Clinton rallies, and Trump rallies have in common. Well the answer was each audience was holding up thousands of I-phones, smart phones during the rallies. In fact if you looked from a different angle all of them looked exactly the same, and maybe were.

      So who really won the US election-and I don’t think I’m being cynical but cutting to the true core of what really matters in our system. The answer to this is Apple and Samsung won the election.

  • V.Lind says:

    He is not taking the daily Intelligence briefings offered to all Presidents-elect, apparently because he claimed to be smart already. What does he think Intelligence briefings are? Tips on how to raise your IQ? Coaching to get into Mastermind or Mensa? President Obama was even drawn to comment, and said that without them Mr. Trump would really be out there on his own. If only…

    Less than 5 weeks, folks, and he will become “leader of the free world.”

  • Ungeheuer says:

    But then everything about this man is deeply embarrassing.

    • Sue says:

      I wouldn’t disagree with that but he has been elected by the people – that must be respected.

      • Bruce says:

        I’m not going to use Trump’s loss of the popular vote to claim that his election is illegitimate. He may or may not care about uniting the country, healing the divisions, etc., but it would be smart of him to realize that the “sore losers” are not just a few whiny crybabies sitting in a corner. (Also, midterm elections do not rely on the electoral college.)

        • Sue says:

          “Uniting the country”, “healing the divisions”…whom do you suppose created those ‘divisions’ in the first place, carving the nation up into disparate ethnic, sexual and race groups? Come on now; be a bit reasonable.

          • Bruce says:

            OK then, “working to undo the damage that the Democrats have done to the country.” How’s that?

          • William Safford says:

            Republicans; or, to be more specific, the descendants of the white supremacist Dixiecrats who jumped ship from the Democrats to the Republicans in the wake of the civil rights legislation in the 1960s by President Johnson, and their allies. The Dixiecrats were welcomed by the Republicans as part of the Southern Strategy, and have gradually taken over the Republican Party.

            Trump is the apotheosis of the ignorant, populist, bigoted Republican Party of today.

            President Lincoln would be saddened to see how his party has devolved into ignominy.

  • Michael says:

    I’m sure he realizes the error. We’ve all made similar errors in our daily work, especially emails and texts that we jot off quickly. That’s another reason to proofread everything. It’s also possible that it was a word that was incorrectly used by some voice command or autotype on his device he uses. I recall seeing many typographical errors on this blog. But I do wish he would stop with Twitter. I don’t believe anything good can come from using it.

    • Bruce says:

      I have limited experience with voice recognition software, but in my (limited) experience it usually substitutes real words that sound something like the intended word. E.g., “president” could come out as “precedent” or “press a dent.” However, they don’t come up with misspelled words. Again, limited experience.

  • Daniel F. says:

    I received a financial solicitation from the Juilliard School in which the name of the school was spelled correctly two out of three times. The error was the traditional one: Julliard. One of my students, without any particular intentions, once spelled it “Jewyard”. Trump’s inability to spell is or should be the LEAST of our troubles with him.

  • Steve Pruitt says:

    Trump won. Deal with it and get back to mediocre reporting of classical music news.

  • Craig says:

    Since when was this a blog for cutting edge political commentary?

    • Max Grimm says:

      It doesn’t matter what threads Norman posts or what this blog is/should be about, considering the fact that there are several frequent commenters here who would manage to thoroughly politicize even a thread about the tonal qualities of wound, gut core viola strings.

      • Daniel F. says:

        I know what you mean, but the post itself was, in this case, a political one: thus it’s really impossible to comment on it without being political. I suppose one can, in some “protest”, not comment at all.

        • Max Grimm says:

          Agreed. In this case the post is about Donald Trump and therefore political commentary is naturally expected.
          As you correctly identified however, I simply fail to understand why some commenters can’t resist introducing politics in threads that (initially) have absolutely nothing even remotely political or politically themed or related about them.
          Most frequent SD readers can probably name a select few commenters who have been posting for a long time, on a multitude of (non-political) topics and have yet to write even one single post that didn’t contain unwarranted and unsolicited political commentary.

    • Bruce says:

      It’s Lebrecht’s blog. He can do what he likes with it.

  • Greg Hlatky says:

    What an idiot! The next thing you know, this fool will say there are 57 states.

    • Cubs Fan says:

      Remember the time the brilliant, highly-educated, informed Obama pronounced “corps” as “corpse”? Too bad Slippedisc didn’t exist then as I’m sure people would be all over that too. Not.

  • Cyril Blair says:

    Trump’s errors in spelling, grammar, usage, etc. are all intentional. How else do you think he made sure he got the white non-college-educated vote? Correct speaking and writing is for the elites. (Trust me, the far right in America wants to make sure you know that.) Don’t forget in Feb 2016 he proclaimed, “I love the poorly educated.”

  • Carlos Majlis says:

    For what reason do you think Putin help and wont Tramp to win? I believe it was because he hope Tramp will be the one who will destroy the USA.

  • Bill E. says:

    My phone has a “predictive text” feature that changes my words frequently, and I sometimes press “send” before realizing that the feature changed my word. Big deal. I understood what he meant without
    having to pull out my red pencil.

  • Pamela Brown says:

    It seems to me that Pres. Obama is intent on sandbagging Trump before he even takes office. Now he is using CIA and FBI to support his position. Had Hillary won, most likely none of this would have come out.

    CIA did the same thing with JFK and the Bay of Pigs. JFK threatened to smash CIA into a thousand pieces. Two years later Dulles, the head of CIA whom JFK had fired after BOP sat on the Warren Commission.

    This does not bode well for Trump, imo…:-0

  • Sue says:

    I’ve long suspected he’s not actually writing his tweets – somebody else is. These should never be sent in the first place. Perhaps this spelling ‘corrective’ will end the practice altogether. (Now to get the rest of the world to desist also!)

  • Una says:

    What has this got to do with classical music, or have I missed something? 🙂

  • Tom says:

    Its a compliment to the potatoe incidence.

  • Richard Carlisle says:

    Though unpresidented is not a word and would not be suggested by an electronic brain in an autocorrection it nevertheless suggests a possible subliminal concern lurking in his subconcious … something that could result from a future impeachment hearing — leaving him an unpresident.

  • David Nice says:

    Yes, it’s risible, but why this entry on a ‘music’ site? Sorry, Norman, but it smacks of click-bait..

  • Erwin says:

    When I go to Trump’s twitter account, I read the following:
    “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters – rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.”
    So either NL made this one up or, more probably, the word “unpresidented” was meanwhile corrected…
    Now, wouldn’t it be a great idea to improve the comment section on Slipped Disc by adding an edit/delete function as well? Or is it SD’s policy to expose the errors and typos of commentators online until the end of times?

  • Richard Carlisle says:

    Do you think it is possible, knowing Trump as we do that he will soon level with us explaining that telling the truth causes him to break out in a rash and lying is a medical necessity and we should be OK with that?

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