‘Unpresidented’ Donald Trump tweet sets off a deluge of mockery

Washington: US President-elect Donald Trump got plenty of attention — but not the kind he was looking for — after a tweet on Saturday calling out China for its seizure of an unmanned US naval probe.

“China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters — rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented (sic) act,” the real estate magnate wrote on his favourite platform.

“Unpresidented” quickly became a top trending topic on Twitter in the United States, as online wags savaged the incoming President for the unfortunate misspelling.

“TrumpSpellCheck — Unpresidentedly effective,” tweeted Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.

“Dear world, most Americans really wish we could be #unpresidented,” another user wrote.

Even dictionary Merriam-Webster weighed in.

“The #WordOfTheDay is... Not ‘unpresidented’. We don’t enter that word. That’s a new one,” it tweeted.

Mr Trump deleted his tweet after about an hour, replacing it with one correctly using the word “unprecedented”.

His supporters jumped to his defence and said critics were piling on about a typo while ignoring the bigger problem.