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Trump Misquotes Article Praising Him—And Twitter Is Shaking Their Heads

If you’re worried that Donald Trump is losing his mind and is mentally unfit for the rigors of being president of the United States, what with his recent argument with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over their respective nuclear button size, or how Michael Wolff’s Fire & Fury points out that the president repeats himself three times inside of 10 minutes, rest assured. On Saturday morning, Trump sent some tweets to let us all know that he is, like, really smart, and also a genius. And not just some regular, lame genius, but a mentally stable genius. (He actually literally said those words.)

Yes, like some kind of brilliant horse who became the president of the United States somehow, Donald Trump is a stable genius. He is also very good at reading words and ascertaining their meaning.

LOL, JK. Earlier today, Trump tweeted a quotation from an article about him (because he’s only interested in stuff that’s directly about him) from that sedate bastion of political science, The New York Post. 

The pull quote comes from a column by Michael Goodwin, a guy who is evidently friends with Trump. The article is a prime slice of puffery from the pro-Trump Goodwin, who acknowledges that while Trump has had some “missteps,” he’s better than the alternative, which was Hillary Clinton. Goodwin gives overall high marks to the Trump administration, saying that “His is turning out to be an enormously consequential presidency.”

A quick glance at Trump’s tweet about the article reveals a discrepancy. Now, maybe Trump’s Twitter client or smartphone has an aggressive autocorrect function. Or maybe Trump doesn’t actually know the word consequential, because he replaced it with consensual. It’s probably the latter, because “consequential” is actually complimentary in this context. If he knew that, the remarkably self-congratulatory Trump would have left it in. Instead, he misread and/or mistyped it as consensual, which means “with both parties agreeing.” It’s a word generally used to refer to sexual encounters, and also Trump didn’t win the popular vote, so his presidency isn’t actually entirely consensual.

People on Twitter were once again left perplexed and aghast by the president’s behavior.