President Donald Trump admitted that seeking help from the military was necessary for his phone to stop autocorrecting the first lady’s name from Melania to Melody.
The president made the strange claim while appearing with the first lady at a reception to honor military mothers at the White House ahead of Mother’s Day.
Trump, 79, was acknowledging a woman named Melody in his speech when he went on a tangent about getting the military involved for his Truth Social posts.
“I love the name Melody 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,” Trump started. “Every time I wrote Melania, it would correct to Melody.”
The president’s comment was met with polite laughter as he continued to riff.
“I work very fast, very fast, ululululu,” Trump said, imitating typing. “And I’d talk about, and I’d say, ‘and Melania is fantastic. And Happy Mother’s Day Melania, our great first lady Melania,’ but it would spell correct and word correct to Melody.”
The president admitted he would not always proofread it and he was getting “just absolute decimated.”
“They said, ‘He didn’t know the name of his wife. He keeps calling her—’ And I said, ‘What the hell is wrong with this machine?” Trump recounted. “I didn’t know about that little feature, but I got that corrected eventually.”
“You know who corrected? The military. I said, ‘Come here. You got to correct this. You’re killing me.’ I took more abuse. She’s been called Melody a lot,” Trump said.
The president eventually called the actual Melody to the stage, who was the mother of National Guard member Andrew Wolfe, who was shot in Washington, D.C. last year.
As Trump spoke on Wednesday, the first lady sat nearby, having introduced the president before he gave his remarks.
When she read a line that Trump’s “empathy transcends the role and shape a caring leader,” women in the crowd burst into laughter before she could complete her sentence.
When the president stepped in to give remarks moments later, he was met with polite applause.
Trump started by giving an update on Iran where he insisted it was a “skirmish” and suggested the U.S. was doing “unbelievably well” despite the mixed messaging and struggles to reach a deal.
“It’s going very smoothly and we’ll see what happens. They want to make a deal. They want to negotiate, and I think that military mothers would want to hear that. Do you agree? I think it’s appropriate,” Trump said. “Somebody would say, ‘Oh that’s not appropriate.’ I think military mothers want to hear about this stuff.”
After addressing Iran, Trump raised a series of topics in his remarks. He rambled about the need for a White House ballroom and went back to talking about American cities in blue states being riddled with crime. He even bragged about winning every swing state in the 2024 election.
While acknowledging some of the people in the room, including the wife of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump made the bizarre claim that the Pentagon chief stood on the table at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
While images showed Hegseth standing at one point amid the confusion over the shooting, he was not spotted standing on a table in the Washington Hilton as people took cover.
