If you’re going to quote one of the world’s most celebrated physicists, it’s worth making sure you get it right. And, given the fallout over “alternative facts” this year, Ivanka Trump‘s mistake over a saying that she credited to Albert Einstein in a tweet seems particularly apt in its wrongness.
Back in June 2013, the president’s daughter tweeted a quote that she incorrectly attributed to the scientific genius. And the apparent foot-in-mouth remark has been doing the rounds on social media this week, after being picked up by a sharp-eyed author on Twitter.
The reaction to the blooper was mixed. Some ridiculed Ivanka’s seeming ignorance and the irony of her mistake, given the ambiguous nature that her father’s White House administration holds with facts.
Others defended her, insisting that the mistake was intentional and that Ivanka was making a point, or taken out of context, by referencing a longer passage written by Einstein. In fact, the quote is often wrongly attributed to the German-born theorist.
Whatever the reason for the quote, Ivanka’s tweet seems all too pertinent in an era where her father and his team are constantly under scrutiny for their take on “fake news” and “alternative facts.” The latter phrase was coined by White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway, who used it to defend Trump’s then-press secretary Sean Spicer in January after he was accused of exaggerating the size of crowds present at the president’s inauguration.
This story originally appeared on Grazia Daily
