President Donald Trump has issued a public apology to his wife, Melania Trump, for famously misspelling her name as “Melanie” in social media posts, blaming the error on an autocorrect feature he was unaware of at the time. The apology came during a White House event on May 6, honoring military mothers. Addressing the audience, the 79-year-old president revisited the 2018 incident that received criticism and ridicule online.
Donald Trump apologizes for misspelling wife’s name online
Trump told the assembled military mothers that the misspelling was not intentional but the result of a persistent autocorrect problem on his phone. “Every time I wrote Melania it would correct to ‘Melanie’,” he said, referring to the devices he used to post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. He described the app as something built into “these crazy machines that we use to put out truths.”
The president explained that his habit of working quickly compounded the issue. Messages intended to praise the First Lady, including phrases like “Melania is fantastic” and “Our great First Lady Melania,” were consistently altered before posting. “Sometimes I wouldn’t proofread it and I’d say, ‘Hmmm,’ and I would get just absolutely decimated,” Trump recalled.
The original misstep happened in May 2018, shortly after Melania Trump underwent a kidney embolization procedure. Trump posted that it was “Great to have our incredible first lady back home in the White House. Melanie is feeling and doing very well.” The post was later deleted and replaced with the correct spelling, but the error had already started getting criticised.
Reflecting on the backlash, “They’d say, ‘He didn’t know the name of his wife. He keeps calling her [Melanie].’ And I would say, ‘What the hell is wrong with this machine?’” He admitted he had been unfamiliar with the autocorrect function, adding, “I didn’t know about this little feature.”
Concluding his remarks, Trump directly addressed his wife of two decades. He pointed out that Melania Trump has been mistakenly called “Melanie” many times over the years. “I had to explain it to you this way. I stood up here to explain it to you. I apologize,” he said (via Us Weekly).
Originally reported by Devanshi Basu on Mandatory.com.
