The Trump administration really needs a proofreading czar

The Trump administration needs a proofreader

(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The Trump White House is not known for its attention to detail. Along with the administration's apparent lack of fealty to mainstream facts, even President Trump's closest allies concede that if his team had put a bit more effort into crossing the T's and dotting the I's on his immigration ban, it might have survived legal scrutiny. Then there's just basic spelling. Trump's list of purportedly underreported terrorist attacks might have appeared more credible if it hadn't misspelled things like "attacker" and "San Bernardino," or included hyper-reported attacks and attacks that weren't terrorism. Sunday was a red-letter day for Trump administration typos.

See if you can spot the error in this commemorative photo of Trump, being sold through the Library of Congress:

The photo — with the inspiring quote "No dream is too big, no challenge is to great" — was intended to capture "the essence of Donald Trump's campaign for the presidency of the United States," according to BuzzFeed, which visited the site before the Library of Congress yanked the page from the website.

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Then there's the Education Department's well-intentioned attempt to celebrate Black History Month by noting the wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois, the African-American writer and co-founder of the NAACP. Maybe a restive social media editor was trying to make a subtle point about the new boss, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, by misspelling Du Bois as DeBois — and then flubbing the apology tweet:

Or maybe spelling just isn't part of the plan to make American great again.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.