The President’s Arsenal of Insults Has a Telling New Entry

Donald Trump, as a creator of insults, is not a poet. But he is prolific—no critic can doubt his commitment to his craft—and his body of work, whatever it may lack in artistry, is notable for its volume alone. Every time the president calls someone a “dog” or a “pig” or a “horseface,” he solidifies his status as the GOAT. As a result, whether the insults are personalized attacks (“Sleepy Joe,” “Shifty Schiff,” “Pocahontas”) or general ones (“crazy,” “nasty,” “dumb as a rock”), they form, together, a data set: a collection of text that can be categorized, analyzed, and mined for insights—not into the person being targeted but into the man who does the aiming.This week, a video went viral: a clip from an interview with the president conducted by the Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker. The clip owes some of its popularity to its oddness. The sit-down, filmed in Wisconsin, was set in a barn, with a John Deere tractor in the background and the sound of rain thundering on the roof. But the video has spread, as well, because the abasements that it broadcasts are at once so familiar and, in their way, so newly revealing of the man. They also reaffirm a specific trend. If the president’s put-downs have themes, many can be found in one particular line of the corpus: Insults → Insults Directed at Journalists → Insults Directed at Women Journalists → Insults Directed at Women Journalists of Color.The interview began as typical Sunday-show fare. The journalist and the president discussed current political events, including the economy and the war in Iran. The conversation then turned to the recent California primary, and the president steered the discussion to another of his reliable themes: supposed election malfeasance. The state’s votes have been counted fraudulently, he said—just as the votes were, he added, in the 2020 presidential election. Welker responded to the assertions (the latter of which has been so thoroughly debunked that it is commonly referred to as the Bi