Friends don't let friends tweet stupid.

Unfortunately for Andrea Mitchell, she didn't have any friends around.

It started earlier in the day:

Cruz had appeared on America's Newsroom earlier Wednesday to discuss the Senate impeachment trial against former President Donald Trump. "It is reminiscent of Shakespeare, that it is full of sound and fury and yet signifying nothing," he had said.

Andrea Mitchell, believing herself to be part of the "smart set" because she holds the political beliefs that the smart set are supposed to hold, saw her opening and leapt at the chance to demonstrate how dumb Ted Cruz was, and in so doing, how very smart and clever she was.

At some point in her life, Mitchell must have walked by a Barnes & Noble, or perhaps a home goods store that sells those shower curtains that are made to look like shelves full of books, but regardless she must have had some dim memory of "The Sound and the Fury" written by a guy named Faulkner.

And so she sent out a tweet and sat back and waited for the accolades to roll in.

And a few did, such as this from fellow smart-set traveler Jennifer ‘America is Back' Rubin.

Ooh, sick burn!

There was one small problem with this very short-lived snark fest.

Mitchell was completely wrong.

Or, as the kids like to say, akshually...

Wrong William.

Cruz really was quoting William Shakespeare, paraphrasing a line from an obscure little play called "Macbeth."

Yes, William Faulkner wrote a book with a title that clearly echoed Shakespeare called "The Sound and the Fury" about 400 years later.

So, other than wrong person, wrong work, and wrong century, she was pretty close.

Close like MSNBC's Russian collusion reporting was close.

Her error did not go unnoticed among people who actually are well-read and don't just pretend to be.

Cruz weighed in himself of course as only he can.

She eventually apologized to Cruz, but she could not resist pointing out that while she made a mistake, she was still very smart.

I clearly studied too much American literature and not enough Macbeth.

This is what's called a "humble brag." "Oh yes, I was wrong about Macbeth but that was because I was too busy studying American literature, and not that Limey nonsense."

In fact, the only reason she didn't take quantum physics, which she totally could have had she wanted to, was because she didn't want anything to interfere with her American literature studies.

Of course, if you really had studied American literature, then you'd be familiar with the origin of the title for Faulkner's book, but don't pay any attention to that because she's on TV.

In fairness to Mitchell, she's "Chief Washington Correspondent and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for NBC," not Chief Literary Critic.

Or, it would appear, someone who stayed awake during high school English.