Trump calls Apple’s CEO ‘Tim Apple’ to save time after denying having said it to donors

Author: CBS News
Published: Updated:
FILE - In this Wednesday, March 6, 2019 file photo, President Donald Trump talks to Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook during the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board's first meeting in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. To President Donald Trump, it was an awkward slip of the lip. To Apple CEO Tim Cook, it was an opportunity to poke some lighthearted fun at a president who has often clashed with the tech industry. A day after Trump mistakenly referred to Cook at a Wednesday White House meeting as “Tim Apple” — an understandable slip, perhaps, coming from the head of the Trump Organization — Cook quietly changed his Twitter account, replacing his last name with the Apple logo. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
FILE – In this Wednesday, March 6, 2019 file photo, President Donald Trump talks to Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook during the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board’s first meeting in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. To President Donald Trump, it was an awkward slip of the lip. To Apple CEO Tim Cook, it was an opportunity to poke some lighthearted fun at a president who has often clashed with the tech industry. A day after Trump mistakenly referred to Cook at a Wednesday White House meeting as “Tim Apple” — an understandable slip, perhaps, coming from the head of the Trump Organization — Cook quietly changed his Twitter account, replacing his last name with the Apple logo. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

President Donald Trump pushed back on the jokes about his understandable slip-up when he called Apple’s CEO Tim Cook “Tim Apple.”

Trump said the shortened name was an “easy way to save time & words,” in a tweet. “The Fake News was disparagingly all over this, & it became yet another bad Trump story!”

Apple CEO Tim Cook attended a meeting Wednesday of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board. While praising Cook — sitting right next to him — Trump said, “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 gotta start doing it here,’ and you really have. I mean, you’ve really put a big investment in our country.

“We really appreciate it very much, Tim Apple.”

Halfway right.

When Trump uses nicknames, he sticks with them: “Crooked Hillary.” “Lyin’ Ted Cruz.”

“Tim Apple” is just a flub, but it’s not the first time he slipped up on a name with the person fewer than a few feet away.

Business Insider caught him last year messing up the name of Lockheed Martin CEO, Marillyn Hewson:

So close!

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