Social media users roasted tech billionaire Elon Musk after he appeared to make a spelling error in his latest tweet praising President Donald Trump.
Trump signed an executive order Thursday afternoon to dismantle the Education Department, fulfilling a key campaign promise from last year. Musk celebrated Trump’s order in a post to social media platform X with a meme.
The meme showed Trump’s face edited onto someone making a peace sign hand gesture next to a headstone meant to symbolize the Department of Education. However, the meme included a spelling mistake within the text that read: “Departmen of Education.”
Social media users immediately ridiculed Musk, arguing that his spelling mistake highlighted the need for the Education Department.
One user wrote: You misspelled ‘department,’ thus proving why we need a departmenT of education and why you should have studied something other than money”.
“The misspelling [of] department highlights the need for such a department,” wrote another user.
One user on X noted that Trump cannot completely get rid of the department without an act of Congress.
“Elon Musk can’t spell. He also doesn’t know that Congress has to get rid of the “Departmen” of Education and that Donald’s little executive order is meaningless. Is anyone surprised?” the tweet read.
Trump has derided the Education Department as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, completing its dismantling is most likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979. Republicans said they will introduce legislation to achieve that, while Democrats have quickly lined up to oppose the idea.
The order says the education secretary will, “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.”
It offers no detail on how that work will be carried out or where it will be targeted, though the White House said the agency will retain certain critical functions.
Trump said his administration will close the department beyond its “core necessities,” preserving its responsibilities for Title I funding for low-income schools, Pell grants and money for children with disabilities.
The White House said earlier Thursday the department will continue to manage federal student loans, but the order appears to say the opposite. It says the Education Department doesn’t have the staff to oversee its $1.6 trillion loan portfolio and “must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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