President Trump’s Explanation For ‘Tim Apple’ Is Being Compared To A Character From ‘The Office’

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President Donald Trump’s latest gaffe happened last week during a meeting for the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, when he referred to Apple CEO Tim Cook as “Tim Apple.” “I used to say, Tim, you gotta start doing it over here and you really have, you’ve really put a big investment in the country,” Trump told Cook, in regards to bringing manufacturing operations back to the United States. “We really appreciate it very much, Tim Apple.”

Trump was subsequently ridiculed in the media and online as result of the gaffe — but now, nearly one week later — he’s offered an explanation on Twitter as to what was going on in that big orange head of his.

“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,” Trump tweeted. “The Fake News was disparagingly all over this, & it became yet another bad Trump story!”

Uh … okay, then?

Aside from not being such a great explanation, Trump’s excuse literally mirrors a cold open from a season eight episode of The Office. In “The Incentive,” the doofus character of Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner) known for his lack of communication skills, decides to “save time” by abbreviating his words and sentences, to the bewilderment of his coworkers.

Eventually Jim, Pam, and Andy intervene and convince Kevin to talk normally again. In the last few seconds of the clip however, Kevin literally says to the camera: “When me president, they see. They see…”

The comparison was quickly pointed out by several people on Twitter:

Likewise, others piled on to ridicule Trump’s bad attempt at damage control, which only reignited what everyone had basically already forgotten about.

https://twitter.com/pattymo/status/1105114092619083776

One person even compared the explanation to Michael Scott — so close!

https://twitter.com/alissamarie/status/1105084971100852224

Entertaining as it can be, it would honestly be nice to go just one day without the president reminding everyone of a fictional character.