Donald Trump may be renowned for many things, but his writing skills aren't one of them. The tweet-a-minute president has made countless errors in his social media interactions before, and - at this rate - is more likely to go down in history for his inexplicable "covfefe" post than he will for achieving any kind of significant diplomatic progress.
But it seems that he's very much in denial of this (which we should have known from his "I have the best words" claim last year), and yesterday tweeted about how excellent he is at writing:
"After having written many best selling books, and somewhat priding myself on my ability to write, it should be noted that the Fake News constantly likes to pour over my tweets looking for a mistake. I capitalize certain words only for emphasis, not b/c they should be capitalized!"
Unfortunately, the tweet proved the exact opposite of what he was trying to say, as one person's corrections make clear:
The former businessman quickly tried to cover up his one most glaring error - the misspelling of "pore" - by deleting the original tweet and reposting with the correct spelling, but the damage was done. Hundreds of people had already called him out on the error, including none other than an actual bestselling author, JK Rowling.
In a series of four tweets, the Harry Potter writer demonstrated exactly how she felt about someone with Trump's track record of spelling errors describing himself as a great wordsmith:
"Seriously, @realDonaldTrump is the Gratest Writer on earth," she concluded in a deliberately error-laden post.
She also pointed out that the so-called "best selling" book Trump is referring to - The Art of the Deal - was actually ghostwritten, and the book's real author, Tony Schwartz, has given interviews about how he felt guilty for concealing his identity for so long.
"I put lipstick on a pig," he said in an interview with the New Yorker. "I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is ... I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization."
But Schwartz and Rowling haven't been the only people to publicly roast Trump over his writing abilities (or lack thereof). Yesterday, even the Merriam-Webster dictionary had some shade to dish out.
For now, Trump can continue deleting tweets and convincing himself that he is some sort of "stable genius", but the evidence points to the contrary. He has consistently proven that he cannot write, cannot communicate, and, most worryingly, cannot govern.
Fortunately, Trump's tweets are considered presidential records, and the National Archives has requested that the White House keep note of deleted or altered tweets - meaning that, no matter how hard he tries to cover his tracks - his mistakes will always be on record somewhere.
So, if JK Rowling ever wants to investigate the litany of errors in the backlog of the president's social media interactions at any point, official records should give her plenty of material to "pour" over.