Trump Can't Get His 'Tim Apple' Stories Straight

It was an amusing gaffe -- during a bizarre White House meeting last week between the president and prominent business leaders, President Trump called Apple's gay CEO "Tim Apple" instead of his real name, Tim Cook. The amusing goof lit up a Twitter for a few hours, Cook himself playfully jabbed at the president on Twitter, and then the moment went to the graveyeard reserved for Trump's unending embarrassments.

But the president, immune to admitting even the tiniest of mistakes, refused to let it go. Speaking at his Florida home this weekend, he told Republican donors that he actually said, "Tim Cook Apple" but the "Cook" was pronounced very quietly. Axios reports that even Trump supporters were dumbfounded by the claim, since the whole moment was captured on tape (well, that hasn't stopped him before).

Trump then refined his story on Monday morning, tweeting:

Trump did not think this one through -- "Apple" is a bigger word, with more syllabyles than "Cook."

Pundits like to claim that Trump is a Twitter master, but his refusal to laugh at himself, and to awkwardly try to correct a minor mistake, became just more fodder for the Twitterverse.