Trump’s Unbelievable Confession Shocks Viewers After He Calls One 500-Year-Old Word ‘New’ and Another Ancient
Apparently, President Donald Trump, 79, recently learned a new word that seems to be very familiar to just about everyone — except him.
The brash New York-bred billionaire is known to take credit for creating common terms and phrases. He also often comes off as completely unaware of other regularly used words.
Clips from Trump’s Nov. 5 interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier have since exploded online, with viewers cringing over his bizarre word choices and wondering if he’s just now discovering vocabulary the rest of America already knows.
“You know they have this new word called affordability, and they don’t talk about it enough,” Trump told Baier while discussing the state of the U.S. economy.
Later in the televised segment, he added, “I think of groceries. It’s an old-fashioned word, but it’s a beautiful word. Beef, we have to get down, but we’ve got prices way down.”
Trump, who is married to Slovenian-born Melania Trump, quickly became an easy target for social media trolls, who pointed to the two incidents as proof that the president has a limited grasp of the English language.
“Can someone buy him a dictionary for Christmas?” one Threads user suggested. Another person on the app advised, “His staff really should shut him up sometimes.”
A third jokingly wrote about Trump, “Awww, gramps learned a new word!” Someone else pointed out, “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”
“Trump treats the words ‘groceries’ and ‘affordability’ like a foreign language and posted 30 times about his marble toilet,” a tough critic of the president wrote on the platform.
The post continued, “As he builds a $300 Million ballroom while fighting in court to starve Americans and take away health care – but y’all think he cares about working people?”
As the MAGA movement’s self-proclaimed wordsmith, Trump’s spent the past decade taking credit for words that were never his to begin with. He’s turned the art of taking credit for preexisting words into something of a personal brand.
In 2017, Merriam-Webster dictionary checked Trump for taking credit for the phrase “prime the pump” by letting the world know that “priming the pump” dates back to the early 19th century.
Trump has also claimed he came up with the term “fake news” even though Merriam-Webster had to step in — again — to remind everyone the phrase has been around since at least 1890.
The phrase ‘priming the pump’ dates to the early 19th century.
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) May 11, 2017
However, “groceries” has been Trump’s most cherished term. He even maintained that the word played a huge role in his win in the 2024 election over then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I won on groceries. It’s a very simple word – groceries. Like almost… who uses the word? I started using the word,” Trump said in a post-election interview with NBC News in December 2024.
More recently, Trump has actually used unusual phrases that left viewers confused. The POTUS mentioning so-called “ocean drugs” while giving a speech on Oct. 22 led to complaints that he just randomly makes up terms.
