Donald Trump goes into a tailspin after misspelling the same word for fifth time in two weeks
One of the worst kept secrets in politics is that Donald Trump has basic literacy issues. Beyond frequently misspelling basic words, he also frequently confuses homonyms, sometimes uses words incorrectly, and occasionally invents imaginary words that vaguely sound like the feeling he’s trying to convey. Surprisingly, he’s not been consistently relying on the vast resources of the White House to cover for his semi-illiteracy. This has been most recently evidenced by the fact that he’s now spelled the same word incorrectly for the fifth time in two weeks.
Back on August 19th, when Trump was trying to recover from his disastrous response to the Charlottesville attack, he tried tweeting something conciliatory. In the process he twice used the word “heel” when he meant “heal.” Then he must have decided he didn’t like the overall tone of the tweet. He deleted it and reworded it, only to go with two more instances of “heel” instead of “heal.” Sometime later that tweet was deleted as well, and replaced with a corrected third attempt. It turns out Trump didn’t learn the correct usage, however.
When responding to the Texas flooding, Donald Trump wrote yesterday that “Texas is heeling fast” in a tweet. This, incredibly, marks the fifth time in two weeks in which he’s used the word “heel” when he meant “heal.” As per usual, he ended up deleting it and replacing it with a corrected version. Believe it or not, this may all have something to do with Steve Bannon.
Trump’s literacy issues became clear during the campaign. In one instance he went from “hear by” to “hearby” before landing on “hereby.” But in recent months, Trump’s spelling and usage issues on Twitter all but faded. It suggested that someone on Trump’s staff was either proofreading his tweets in advance or outright ghostwriting them. Then, the day after Steve Bannon was fired, Trump had his first “heal” vs “heel” incident, and has since had other basic gaffes such as “to bad.” This points to Bannon, of all people, potentially having been Trump’s spellchecker.
