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POLITICO
Trump’s ‘Beautiful’ World
By Anusha Mathur,
10 days ago
Illustrations by Rafael Alejandro for POLITICO (source images via Getty and iStock) | Illustration by Rafael Alejandro for POLITICO (source images via Getty and iStock)
“I know words. I have the best words,” Donald Trump told a South Carolina crowd as he campaigned for the Republican primary in December 2015.
It was just six months into his first campaign, but the real estate mogul turned reality TV star turned politician had already garnered a reputation for peppering his speeches with bizarre adjectives, head-scratching non sequiturs and sudden bursts of superlatives. There are words and phrases that he has used for the past nine years on repeat, trotting them out with gusto: “Witch hunt.” “Fake news.” “Tremendous.” “Swamp.” “Huge/Yuge.”
But there’s one word that Trump just hasn’t gotten enough of, whether he was speaking on the campaign trail or waxing philosophic from the Oval Office: “beautiful.”
In 2017, for example, in the span of one month, at different public appearances, he described 35 separate things and people as “beautiful.” In his hands, “beautiful” is an amazingly adaptable adjective, wielded as both a compliment — and an insult. Take last month’s live-streamed interview with Elon Musk, when Trump had this to say about his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris: “She’s a beautiful woman, so we’ll leave it at that.”
Most of the time, there’s little rhyme or reason to what he considers worthy of the adjective. Here is a selection of 50 times (curated from many thousands of instances) that Trump used his favorite word:
2 A Rubber Trump Mask.
“Look at this mask. Oh wow, it’s beautiful. Nice head of hair, I’ll tell you that.” | Nov. 7, 2016
3 His Temperament.
“My temperament is totally controlled, so beautiful.” | June 3, 2016
4 A Police Raid.
“Columbia University was a great school, but it’s been badly damaged, I think, reputationally. … They could’ve done this with the tents. … But the police came in and in exactly two hours, everything was over. It was a beautiful thing to watch. New York’s finest.” | May 1, 2024
5 Soil.
“We happen to be lucky; under our feet, we have great wealth. Not only in the form of your kind of wealth, which is beautiful, fertile soil, but also in other locations in the form of energy.” | JUNE 21, 2017
6 His Hair.
“You go into a new home, you turn on the faucet, no water comes out. You turn on the shower – if you’re like me, you can’t wash your beautiful hair properly."| AUG. 6, 2020
7 Clean water.
“No longer will the EPA be telling you how to run your business or do your job or live your life. Instead, it will focus on its true mission: clean air and clean, beautiful, crystal water—nice, beautiful, clean water." | june 21, 2017
9 A Dog and a Hole in a Wall.
“Our K-9, as they call — I call it a dog, a beautiful dog, a talented dog — was injured and brought back. But we had no soldier injured. And they did a lot of shooting, and they did a lot of blasting, even not going through the front door. You know, you would think you go through the door. If you’re a normal person, you say, “Knock, knock. May I come in?” The fact is that they blasted their way into the house and a very heavy wall, and it took them literally seconds. By the time those things went off, they had a beautiful, big hole, and they ran in and they got everybody by surprise.” | june 21, 2017
10 White House Telephones.
“These are beautiful phones.” | jan. 24, 2017
11 Farming.
“Farming — which is something that is very beautiful to me. I’m not a farmer, but I’d be very happy to be one. It’s a very beautiful world to me.” | june 22, 2017
12 Coal.
“And we've ended the war on clean, beautiful coal, and we're putting our miners back to work.” | june 21, 2017
13 A Solar Wall on the Border.
“A solar wall. Makes sense. Let's see. We're working it out. We'll see. Solar wall—panels. Beautiful. I mean, actually, think of it, the higher it goes, the more valuable it is. It's like—[laughter]. Pretty good imagination, right? Good? My idea.” | june 21, 2017
14 Fighter Jets.
“And a lot of it's already coming, those brand-new, beautiful planes, those incredible stealth F-35s, the . . . you have the F-35, you have the F-18s, the Super Dupers, the Hornets.” | oct. 18, 2018
15 A Note from Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“And I got along very well with President Xi. He’s a great guy, wrote me a beautiful note the other day when he heard about what happened.” | july 20, 2024
17 A Phone Call with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“It was beautiful. It was just a perfect conversation.” | sept. 25, 2020
18 Sleeping Gas.
“They have a gas, that’s a beautiful sleeping gas, that puts [terrorists] to sleep.” | oct. 10, 2001
19 US Military Weapons.
“One of the things that we will discuss is the purchase of lots of beautiful military equipment because nobody makes it like the United States.” | may 21, 2017
20 Taylor Swift.
“I think she’s beautiful — very beautiful! I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful, actually — unusually beautiful!” | novEMBER 2023
21 Carly Fiorina.
“I think she's got a beautiful face and she's a beautiful woman.” | july 21, 2016
22 Hillary Clinton.
“I called her ‘crooked Hillary.’ Now I call her ‘very beautiful Hillary’ because she’s meaningless.” | jan. 5, 2024
“And what they did to Brett Kavanaugh and his beautiful family is a national disgrace that will not be soon forgotten.” | oct. 18, 2018
24 A Female Reporter at a Press Call.
“We have all this beautiful Irish press. Where are you from? ... She has a nice smile on her face.” | june 27, 2017
25 French First Lady Brigitte Macron.
“You’re in such good shape. She’s in such good physical shape. Beautiful.” | july 13, 2017
26 Aid Worker and ISIS Hostage Kayla Mueller.
“She was a beautiful woman, beautiful young woman. Helped people. She was there to help people. And he saw her and he thought she was beautiful, and he brought her into captivity for a long period of time and then he killed her.” | oct. 27, 2019
27 Kim Keon-hee, First Lady of South Korea.
“It’s a great honor to have you at the White House and your very beautiful and lovely wife.” | june 29, 2017
28 Kamala Harris.
“I saw a picture of her on Time Magazine today. She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live. It was a drawing. And actually, she looked very much like our great first lady, Melania. She didn’t look like Kamala. But of course, she’s a beautiful woman, so we’ll leave it at that.” | aug. 12, 2024
29 Chocolate Cake.
Trump recounted telling President Xi about air strikes he authorized in Syria: “I was sitting at the table. We had finished dinner. We’re now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen and President Xi was enjoying it.” | April 13, 2017
30 The Color Red.
“And those maps, those electoral maps, they were all red. Beautiful red. Beautiful.” | june 22, 2017
31 The Supreme Court.
“The Supreme Court is a beautiful thing to watch in many respects.” | feb. 28, 2024
32 A Football Tackle.
“Two guys, Just really, beautiful tackle. Boom, 15 yards! The referee gets on television — his wife is sitting at home, she’s so proud of him. They’re ruining the game!” | sept. 22, 2017
33 Tax Dollars.
“We should immediately stop sending our beautiful American tax dollars to countries that hate us and laugh at our President’s stupidity!” | nov. 7, 2014
34 Health Care Negotiations.
About his 2017 plans to replace Obamacare: "It’s a big, fat, beautiful negotiation. Hopefully we’ll come up with something that’s going to be really terrific.” | march 13, 2017
35 His Proposed Tax Cut.
Trump discussed his plans to help American businesses and workers: “At the very center of that plan is a giant, beautiful, massive, the biggest ever in our country tax cut.” | sept. 29, 2017
36 Confederate Statues.
“The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” | aug. 17, 2017
37 His Health Care Plan.
“I would like to terminate Obamacare and come up with a brand new beautiful health care.” | oct. 22, 2020
38 American Lives.
About people who were killed by undocumented immigrants: “These beautiful American lives were stolen because our government refused to do its job. If the government had simply enforced our immigration laws, these Americans would still be alive today.” | aug. 4, 2017
39 'Made in America.'
“For more than two centuries, those three beautiful words have been the world standard for quality, craftsmanship, and excellence, and they still are today.” | july 7, 2017
40 Young Black Conservatives.
Trump hosted guests from the 2018 Young Black Leadership Summit: “I can just look at the incredible beautiful and handsome faces," he said gesturing towards the crowd. "Today, you’re not allowed to use those terms because they’ll say you’re — but you know what, I’ll use it anyway, beautiful and handsome.” | oct. 26, 2018
41 His Own Sentences.
“For the last month I decided not to do interviews, because they give interviews and they chop up your sentences and cut them short. You will have this beautiful flowing sentence where the back of the sentence reverts to the front and they cut the back of the sentence off.” | dec. 13, 2016
43 A Campaign Arena.
“To all of those people watching, it's an unbelievable place. It is a big, beautiful arena, and it is packed.” | june 21, 2017
44 Belgium (the country).
“Belgium is a beautiful city.” | june 15, 2016
45 Harambe the Gorilla.
“It was amazing. There were moments with the gorilla, the way he held that child, it was almost like a mother holding a baby. It looks so beautiful and calm. And there were moments where it looked pretty dangerous.” | may 31, 2016
46 Lives lost in Afghanistan.
“As of a few months ago, our country had spent $6 trillion in the Middle East — wasted. And the lives — the lives, thousands and thousands and thousands of lives — $6 trillion and thousands of young, beautiful lives.” | june 21, 2017
47 Airports.
“You know, we used to be the leader in airports. We'd have the most beautiful airports. Now we're like a third-world country.” | june 21, 2017
48 Otto Warmbier, American Imprisoned in North Korea.
“But you look at North Korea, what's going — look at Otto — beautiful Otto. Went over there a healthy, wonderful boy, and you see how he came back.” | june 21, 2017
49 The Unknown.
“It is America’s destiny to be at the forefront of humanity’s eternal quest for knowledge and to be the leader amongst nations on our adventure into the great unknown. And I could say the great and very beautiful unknown. Nothing more beautiful.” | june 30, 2017
50 Himself.
“If I took this shirt off, you'd see a beautiful, beautiful person.” | june 22, 2024
The bottom line is that the GOP is trying to push down America’s throat another term by the toddler in chief who added 32 felonies to his record and wants to lead the army that doesn’t admit felons into its ranks . That in addition to a million other blunders and lots of garbage talk and no viable policy….🤡🤡when is this nightmare ending🤷♂️
Dave Gilmore
8d ago
Trump has the brain of a salamander, by the time the election rolls around, even his cult won't be able to decode his verbal babbling.
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