On Thursday, just a day before St. Patrick's Day, Donald Trump stood next to Ireland's Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, at the Friends of Ireland luncheon in Washington D.C. and delivered a proverb that he said he'd been fond of for a long time. He was "reminded of the proverb" that he'd heard "for many, many years and I love it," he claimed.
"Always remember to forget the friends that prove untrue, but never forget to remember those who have stuck by you," said Trump. "We know that, politically speaking." The only problem is that this probably wasn't Irish.
If we're being honest, this is probably pretty low on the list of things Trump or his administration said this week that could get us all killed. But people on Twitter will do what they can to call out anything, so here's the best responses to the "Irish proverb":
As the Huffington Post pointed out, some amateur sleuth Twitter-ers also reasoned that someone on Trump's team probably just Googled "Irish proverbs." Still others pointed out that it was a line from a poem from Nigerian poet Albashir Adam Alhassan called "Remember to Forget":
According to Mashable, the phrase is also claimed by Joanne Tuttle in her book Crystal Inspirations: Poems by Joanne Tuttle. Looks like we could have a poet beef brewing.
As Huffington Post, Mashable and anybody who actually saw the quote pointed out, Trump didn't explicitly say that the saying was Irish. But a spokeswoman for the White House told The Hill that the phrase made its way into Trump's speech after it was supplied in an email by the State Department, by way of the National Security Council, as "building blocks in advance of the event." Her needlessly complicated explanation continued by saying "These building blocks were supplied in the context of the Shamrock Ceremony and were ultimately used in the prepared remarks for the luncheon."
Sorry Irish people/unattributed Nigerian poet/Ms. Tuttle. We'll give it another shot next year.
