President Donald Trump is setting the record straight about his infamous 2018 social media faux pas, in which he spelled wife Melania Trump’s name “Melanie.”
“I love the name Melanie,” the president, 79, told a group of military mothers during a White House event on Wednesday, May 6, honoring both women who have children who serve in the military as well as women who are moms who serve in the military themselves.
“Because for a long time, you know, they have spell correct and word correct on these crazy machines that we use to put out truths, or they used to be called tweets, and every time I wrote Melania it would correct to ‘Melanie,’” the commander-in-chief continued.
He then explained that he works “very fast,” which caused a few mishaps when he was using X (at the time it was called Twitter).
“I’d say, ‘And Melania is fantastic,’ and, ‘Happy Mother’s Day Melania,’ [or], ‘Our great First Lady Melania,’ but it would spell correct and word correct to ‘Melanie,’” he recalled. “And sometimes I wouldn’t proofread it and I’d say, ‘Hmmm,’ and I would get just absolutely decimated.”
Donald remembered facing backlash in the press over the alleged autocorrect issues.
“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 said, referring to his cellphone before admitting, “I didn’t know about this little feature.”
Donald then revealed why he brought up the name dilemma, explaining that “the military” was the group “who corrected it.”
Although the president said he “took more abuse” for the mishap, he noted that Melania, 56, has been called Melanie “a lot.”
“I had to explain it to you this way. I stood up here to explain it to you. I apologize,” Donald concluded, saying sorry to his wife of 20 years in the public setting.
Donald’s trip down memory lane came eight years after he misspelled his wife’s name on social media, writing“Melanie” and not “Melania” in a tweet about his spouse’s successful surgery in May 2018.
“Great to have our incredible first lady back home in the White House. Melanie is feeling and doing very well,” Donald wrote via X at the time, confirming that Melania underwent a kidney embolization procedure earlier that week and was recovering nicely.(Trump later deleted and retweeted the message with the correct spelling.)
Jimmy Kimmel was one of the stars who called out Donald’s mistweet during a May 2018 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!
“In between fits of hysteria, the president welcomed Melania back home after she had a kidney procedure,” Kimmel, 58, said during his opening monologue. “But he misspelled his own wife’s name.”
Kimmel noted that while many people pointed to autocorrect as the source of Donald’s mistake, the comedian said he wasn’t convinced the on-the-record explanation was accurate.
“At first I assumed it must have been an autocorrect thing that did it. But it turns out, not only doesn’t Twitter autocorrect to ‘Melanie,’ if you type ‘Melania’ it doesn’t even highlight it. So it wasn’t autocorrect,” he alleged.
Kimmel then joked, “I think this happened because his fingers are so big, his hands, and when your hands and fingers are that big and meaty, the E, the A, the R, the S, you can’t help it, you just mash the letters all at once.”
The late night host — who has a history of poking fun at the current president — concluded by saying that the former reality TV star deserved a little grace for his social media blunder.
“‘Melania’ is not a common name, but it’s not so hard to spell,” Kimmel teased. “But to be fair to him, he’s had quite a few wives. So, it’s hard to keep track.”
Melania is Donald’s third wife, with whom he shares youngest son Barron, 20. Donald was previously married to Ivana Trump from 1977 to 1990, during which time they welcomed Donald Jr., 48, Ivanka, 44, and Eric, 42. (Ivana died in July 2022 at the age of 73.)
Donald Sr. married second wife Marla Maples in 1993 after having an affair. The former couple welcomed their daughter, Tiffany, 32, that same year. Donald Sr. split from Maples, now 62, in 1997. He married Melania in 2005.
