When giving out report cards for this year’s Super Bowl, the highest marks would obviously have to go to the Kansas City Chiefs for their thrilling comeback victory over the San Francisco 49ers. Many would give out an A to both Demi Lovato for her stirring rendition of the national anthem, and to Jennifer Lopez and Shakira for their halftime show.
All around, it was a ridiculously entertaining Sunday.
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It’s hard to imagine anyone giving the president an A for his congratulatory tweet, however.
Full credit to the Chiefs — just about everyone was counting them out after the third quarter.
San Francisco was up by 10 with just one quarter left to lock down the victory, but the Chiefs pushed back, racking up three touchdowns to take the win away from the 49ers and raise the Vince Lombardi trophy for the first time in the franchise’s 50-year history.
And, as is tradition, shortly after the Chiefs were crowned champs, the president issued his congratulations.
With one small problem: he got the state wrong. “Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs on a great game, under immense pressure. You represented the Great State of Kansas and, in fact, the entire USA, so very well,” President Trump tweeted. “Our Country is PROUD OF YOU!”
Of course, the Chiefs play in Missouri, not Kansas, which Claire McCaskill, former Senator for Missouri, picked up on immediately.
The president quickly deleted the tweet with the fumble and replaced it with one acknowledging Missouri, but not before screenshots could start flying around Twitter.
And the timing of the president’s geographical error is particularly bad, coming soon after his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, became embroiled in a controversy with NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly over Ukraine, in which she claimed Pompeo, during an expletive-laden tirade , challenged her to locate the country on an unmarked map.
The exchange between Kelly and Pompeo soured the State Department’s relationship with the outlet enough that Pompeo kicked another NPR reporter off an official trip to Europe.
Kelly told the The New York Times that “He called out for his aides to bring him a map of the world with no writing, no countries marked. I pointed to Ukraine. He put the map away. He said, ‘People will hear about this.'”
Pompeo later implied that Kelly , who has a master’s degree in European studies from Cambridge and has written extensively about world affairs as an international correspondent, pointed at Bangladesh.
Of course, many people out there expect more of their president.
Especially one who has made much of his appeal in the heartland while denigrating “coastal elites.”
“Um…are we all just going to pretend that Trump doesn’t know which state the Chiefs play for?” wrote one person. “Missouri and Kansas are two entirely different states. These are things you should know before you take office.”
However, it was Trump’s adventures with Sharpies that came first to mind for a lot of Twitter users.
They quickly recalled the president’s attempts to redraw a hurricane forecast map to include Alabama, literally using a Sharpie, so that it would agree with one of his tweets.
The president had his defenders, too.
The talking heads at Fox and Friends were happy to gloss over the error, comparing it to the New York Giants playing their games in New Jersey.
But, as at least one person pointed out, Trump was his own worst enemy on Super Bowl Sunday.
His blunder not only reinforced many of his detractors’ impressions of him, but it also overshadowed his re-election campaign’s Super Bowl ads, effectively making them a terribly expensive, embarrassing waste.
One guy even called it — well, half of it, anyway.
Before the end of the game, @EmmReef predicted that the president would get the state wrong in a congratulatory tweet. However, their prediction that the president would “[take] a shot at the city of SF” did not bear fruit.
And perhaps the gaffe should have been predictable.
As Aaron Blake pointed out for The Washington Post , geography hasn’t been Trump’s strongest suit over the years, as he has claimed a border wall is going up in Colorado, called Belgium a “beautiful city,” mixed up the Baltic and Balkan states — Melania Trump is from a Balkan state — and referred to Ireland, where he owns a property, as part of the U.K.
