Given the fact that Donald Trump spends more time on Twitter than a burgeoning start-up’s social media team, one would assume he’d have figured out the app’s basic functions by now. Yet it seems every day there’s another story about the 71-year-old president’s pudgy fingers blasting off a misfire of a tweet to his 41 million followers, only to be quickly redacted, deleted, or corrected as if it never happened. Today is just another one of those days.
Earlier this morning, while his attention was undoubtedly consumed by a DVR’d episode of Fox & Friends, Trump took a moment to tweet some birthday wishes to famed country singer Lee Greenwood, who turns 75 today. Readers may remember Greenwood as the songwriter of the patriotic ballad “God Bless The U.S.A.” or his only slightly less-known send-up of our neighbors to the north, “God Bless You Canada.” But, in a classic social media faux pas, when the bleary-eyed president went to tag Mr. Greenwood’s handle (@TheLeeGreenwood) this morning, he accidentally tagged a different Lee Greenwood, who probably didn’t expect to be getting a personal message from the president anytime soon.
@leegreenwood83 belongs to a lawyer whose Twitter bio states he’s “focused on Washington DC sports—all things Redskins, Caps, Nationals, Wizards” and that, though he’s currently in New York, he “maintains his DC roots through Twitter.” In addition to being definitely not a 75-year-old country singer, this Greenwood appears to be a fairly vocal critic of Trump. Although he hasn’t tweeted since July of this year, he posted an image of a protest march he attended back in January.
According to New York Magazine, the errant tweet was up for over two hours before someone (definitely not Trump) realized the error, deleted it, and posted a corrected version. Lee Greenwood the lawyer has yet to comment on his brief interaction with the commander in chief, but he should definitely try to cash in on his newfound celebrity soon. It’s only a matter of time before the old man tweets something else dumb and the nation’s attention moves on.