Donald Trump Expands His Vocabulary
…and confuses everybody
The president, in a stagey aside, shaking his head with disgust as though unable to comprehend their hard hearts, said Democrats should be “ashamed” of themselves for not standing up and applauding his words and policies during the State of the Union address. Days before, he had said that the several conservative justices on the Supreme Court who voted against his assumption of great tariff powers should also be ashamed of themselves—and that they particularly should be experiencing this shame in front of their families.
It is often difficult to triangulate precise meaning from Trump’s word choices because of their limited range and general fungibility. Trump is particularly fond of his communications director, Steven Cheung, because he broadly applies—in what other aides say is a bit of secret irony—the same few words over and over again. It is one of the most difficult aspects of the job for his primary speechwriter, Ross Worthington, working within this narrow range and then, gingerly, trying to expand it.
The notion of public shame is a small but significant recent debut.
