President Trump Just Referred to Apple's CEO as 'Tim Apple' The president met with Apple CEO Tim Cook and other members of his American Workforce Policy Advisory Board on Wednesday.
By Troy Wolverton •
This story originally appeared on Business Insider
There's Michael Dell, Adolph Coors, and Tim Apple.
Well, almost.
President Donald Trump seems to have gotten a bit confused about the name of Apple's CEO on Wednesday.
During a meeting with the Apple CEO and other members of his American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, Trump referred to Tim Cook as "Tim Apple" while praising him for investing in the U.S.
"We appreciate it very much, Tim Apple," Trump said.
You can watch the gaffe in the video clip embedded in this tweet:
Trump just called Apple CEO Tim Cook "Tim Apple" pic.twitter.com/gTHHtjWvc9
— Sean O'Kane (@sokane1) March 6, 2019
Here's a longer version of Trump's remarks (emphasis added):
"We're going to open up the labor forces because we have to. We have so many companies coming in people like Tim, you're expanding all over and doing things that I really wanted you to right from the beginning.
"I used to say 'Tim you've got to start doing it over here.' And you really have.
"I mean you've really put a big investment in our country, we appreciate it very much, Tim Apple. But we're opening it up. We have to to bring people in. We want them to be people based on merit. And we want them to come in legally."
It's possible that the apparent gaffe could actually be a case of awkward phrasing. Under this interpretation, Trump may have intended the words "Tim" and "Apple" to be separated by a comma, such that his comments were meant to express gratitude to both Tim Cook and Apple, in sequence.
Still, this wouldn't be the first time Trump has gotten confused about an executive's name. Last March, he flubbed the name of Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson, referring to her as "Marillyn Lockheed."
And of course, Trump is a longtime enthusiast of turning people's names into taunts, as he did in a January tweet referring to Amazon's Jeff Bezos as "Jeff Bozo."
Cook used his time at the meeting to tout the importance of learning how to code software and Apple's efforts to help train students and other people on how to do that.
"We believe strongly that it should be a requirement in the United States for every kid to have coding before they graduate from K-12 and become somewhat proficient at it," Cook said.
Cook has had a mixed relationship with the White House, participating in other meetings with Trump but also criticizing the president's immigration policies.
