Guess who immediately has a “TACO” allergy? President Yuge Taco Salad himself.
Within the annals of four-letter phrases and acronyms Donald Trump has lengthy hitched his political fortunes on, the phrase “taco” could also be simple to miss.
There’s MAGA, most famously. DOGE, courtesy of Elon Musk. Enormous (pronounced yuge, in fact). Wall, as within the one he continues to construct on the U.S.-Mexico border. “Love” for himself, “hate” in opposition to all who stand in his method.
There’s a four-letter time period, nevertheless, that greatest sums up Trump’s shambolic presidency, one nobody would’ve ever related to him when he introduced his first profitable presidential marketing campaign a decade in the past.
Taco.
His first use of essentially the most quintessential of Mexican meals occurred on Cinco de Mayo 2016, when Trump posted a portrait of himself grinning in entrance of an enormous taco salad whereas proclaiming “I Love Hispanics!” Latino leaders instantly ridiculed his Hispandering, with UnidosUS president Janet Murguia telling the New York Instances that it was “clueless, offensive and self-promoting” whereas additionally complaining, “I don’t know that any self-respecting Latino would even acknowledge that a taco bowl is part of our culture.”
Guess what occurred?
Regardless of persistently trashing Latinos, Trump elevated his share of that voters in every of his presidential runs and leaned on them final 12 months to seize swing states like Arizona and Nevada. Latino Republican politicians made historic positive factors throughout the nation in his wake — particularly in California, the place the variety of Latino GOP legislators jumped from 4 in 2022 to a report 9.
The Trump taco salad tweet allowed his marketing campaign to current their billionaire boss to Latinos as simply another Jose Schmo able to chow down on Mexican meals. It used the ridicule thrown at him as proof to different supporters that elites hated individuals like them. Trump will need to have no less than felt assured the taco salad gambit from yesteryear labored as a result of he reposted the picture on social media this Cinco de Mayo, including the road “This was so wonderful, 9 years ago today!”
It’s not precisely stay by the taco, die by the taco. (Come on, why would such a tasty power of fine wish to harm anybody)? However Trump is immediately perturbed by the mere point out of TACO.
Doritos Locos Tacos on the Taco Bell Laguna Seaside location.
(Don Leach/Every day Pilot)
Trump raged when CNBC reporter Megan Cassella requested him about TACO at a White Home press convention this week.
“Don’t ever say what you said,” the commander in chief snarled earlier than boasting about how he wasn’t a rooster and was really a troublesome man. “That’s a nasty question.”
The TACO coinage is ideal: snappy, simply comprehensible, truthful and appears Trump-proof. The grasp of appropriating insults simply can’t do something to make TACO his — Trump All the time Cares Outstandingly simply doesn’t have the identical ring. It’s additionally a reminder that Trump’s anti-Latino agenda to date in his administration makes a predictable mockery of his taco salad boast and associated Hispandering.
In simply over 4 months, Trump and his lackeys have tried to deport as many Latino immigrants — authorized and unlawful — as potential and has threatened Mexico — one in every of this nation’s important buying and selling companions — with a 25% tariff. He has signed government orders declaring English the official language of america and looking for to convey again penalties in opposition to truck drivers who supposedly don’t converse English effectively sufficient at a time when immigrants make up about 18% of the troquero power and Latinos are a giant chunk of it.
In the meantime, the economic system — the primary motive why so many Latinos went for Trump in 2024 within the first place — hasn’t improved because the Biden administration and at all times appears one Trump speech away from getting even wobblier.
As for Latinos, there are some indicators Trump’s early presidency has performed him no nice favors with them. An April survey by the Pew Analysis Middle — thought-about the proverbial gold commonplace relating to objectively gauging how Latinos really feel about points — discovered 27% of them approve of how he’s doing as president, down from 36% again in February.
President Trump provides a thumbs as much as the cheering crowd after a Latinos for Trump Coalition roundtable in Phoenix in 2020.
(Ross D. Franklin / Related Press)
Trump was at all times an imperfect champion of the taco’s successful potential, and never as a result of the fish tacos at his Trump Grill include French fries (labeled “Idaho” on the menu) and the taco salad at the moment prices a ghastly $25. He by no means actually understood {that a} profitable taco should attraction to everybody, by no means shatter or rip aside underneath strain and might by no means take itself significantly like a burrito or a snooty mole.
The president wants to maneuver on from his taco dalliance and take note of one other four-letter phrase, one increasingly more Individuals utter after each pendejo transfer Trump and his flunkies commit:
Assist.
