Donald Trump is “clearly rattled” after being confronted with the his new “TACO” nickname during a press conference earlier this week, says CNN’s Erin Burnett.
The president had a meltdown on Wednesday after being made aware of the acronym, which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” The term was coined by Wall Street traders due to his habit of repeatedly backing down from his threats.
“That’s a nasty question,” he said in response to the reporter who asked about the name at a White House press briefing this week. “Don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question… To me, that’s the nastiest question.”
Talking to former White House lawyer Ty Cobb about the incident on Thursday, Burnett referenced an AI-generated picture of Trump wearing a suit made out of tacos which was posted on the Drudge Report website following the incident.
“This came through after he was asked about the TACO trade, and it was by a reporter from CNBC, and it rattled him, clearly,” said Burnett. “How much is it bothering him right now?”
“Well, I think it bothers him very much,” Cobb said in response. “I mean, what you heard there was the rant of a wounded narcissist. You know he doesn’t take criticism well, and he responds typically with these riffs like that.
“He just… when he gets deeply into his own fears and insecurity like this, he’s capable of saying anything. This is very troubling to him.”
He added: “It’s an affront to him that judges hold him to account. It’s an affront to him that when the facts are not with him, that he’s confronted with them. He’s not capable of saying ‘I made a mistake’, he’s not capable of saying ‘let me see if I can clear this up,’ it’s all very, very personal.”
Trump has yet to make any further comment on the nickname since his rant on Wednesday, but the term has since been picked up by several leading Democratic figures and proliferated on social media. California Governor Gavin Newsom mocked the blocking of Trump’s tariff policies by a federal court by quipping “it’s raining tacos today” while Jon Cooper, a former campaign chair for Barack Obama, penned a taco-themed diss poem aimed at the president on X, and captioned it with the hashtag #TACOTrump.
“Taco Don” memes have also begun to flourish amongst users on X and Bluesky, many of which involve AI-generated images of the president entombed in various taco-related items or dressed as a chicken.
Responding to the court rulings which kickstarted the tariff chaos and minting of his new nickname on Thursday night, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Radical Left Judges, together with some very bad people, are destroying America. Under this decision, Trillions of Dollars would be lost by our Country, money that will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
“It would be the harshest financial ruling ever leveled on us as a Sovereign Nation,” he added. “The President of the United States must be allowed to protect America against those that are doing it Economic and Financial harm.”
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