About

Tim Apple refers to the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, who was called Tim Apple by Donald Trump during a White House American Workforce Policy Advisory Board meeting.

Origin

On March 6th, President Donald Trump sat next to Apple CEO Tim Cook at an afternoon Workforce meeting. Twitter user @sokane1 noted Donald Trumps mistake and posted a clip of the incident to Twitter (shown below). The clip gained over 50,000 retweets and 168,000 likes in a day.

Spread

On March 6th, 2019, Twitter user @Hisler420^[1] replied to @sokane1 saying "He just thinks everyone names their company after themselves like he did." The reply gained 281 retweets and 3,918 likes in a day (shown below, left). Twitter user @prufrock451^[2] also replied with a quote parodying the scene, "'Thanks as well to the other tech leaders here, Bill Microsoft and Frank Pornhub'" (shown below, right). The reply accumulated 179 retweets and 2,500 likes in a day.

That same day, The Daily Show responded to the event by retweeting a compilation video from January 30th which showcases many of the times that Tump has gotten a name wrong on television (shown below).

President Trump plays "Name That Person!" pic.twitter.com/H38cZ8QqQz

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 30, 2019

Later that afternoon, Twitter users began posting images parodying the event. Jack Fink^[3] posted images of "Historic figure similar to Tim Apple" like "Ben Electricity" and "Bill Microsoft" (shown below, left). The tweet gained 1,500 retweets and 4,900 likes in a day. Twitter user @TaylorIBR646^[4] posted an Expanding Brain image with the tweet "Legally changing my name to Tim Apple to become the CEO of Apple" (shown below, right). The tweet garnered 500 retweets and 2,600 likes in a day.

On March 7th, Twitter user @jbillinson^[6] pointed out that "The White House transcript of 'Tim Apple' adds an em dash" (shown below. The briefing statement was posted the day before on the White House website^[5]. On March 9th, Tim Cook's Twitter account name was changed to Tim  (shown below).

On March 11th, President Donald Trump^[7] tweeted "At a recent round table meeting of business executives, & long after formally introducing Tim Cook of Apple, I quickly referred to Tim + Apple as Tim/Apple as an easy way to save time & words. The Fake News was disparagingly all over this, & it became yet another bad Trump story!"The tweet accumulated 19,773 retweets and 95,000 likes in a day (shown below).

That night, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert uploaded a video of Stephen Colbert commenting on the event as well as mentioning Donald Trump's excuse. The video gained 765,200 and 14,000 likes in a day (shown below).

Various Examples

External References