Politico accused President Donald Trump of “cyberbullying” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) with an apparently deliberate typo on Sunday in which he referred to the incoming House Intelligence Committee chair as “little Adam Schitt.”
In covering Trump’s tweet, Politico’s Quint Forgey called the president’s tweet “his crudest nickname yet for a political rival,” and suggested Trump was guilty of “cyberbullying”:
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the president’s misspelling of Schiff’s name was intentional. The office of first lady Melania Trump, who has championed anti-cyberbullying efforts through her “Be Best” initiative, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The “f” key is near the “t” key on a typical QWERTY keyboard, but the president’s errant spelling of Schiff’s surname was almost certainly deliberate.
In his post-midterm election press conference, Trump stressed that he wanted to work with Democrats in the U.S. House, but would fight them if they insisted on crippling his administration through investigations. Trump warned Democrats against a “warlike posture.”
Schiff has insisted for two years that there is “more than circumstantial evidence” of “collusion” between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government, though such evidence has yet to emerge. On Sunday, he objected to the appointment of Matthew Whitaker as Acting Attorney General in place of Jeff Sessions, who resigned earlier this month and had recused himself from the Russia investigation after taking office in 2017.
In response to Trump’s tweet, Schiff responded:
Schiff’s own Twitter feed is full of anti-Trump tweets, including a claim that Trump is the “worst president in modern history.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.