Memes mocking President Donald Trump, dubbing him “TACO Trump,” have exploded across the internet. The term, which means “Trump Always Chickens Out,” has come into the lexicon as the president has come under fire for the handling of his tariff policies.
Why It Matters
On April 2, Trump announced a sweeping tariff agenda on what he dubbed “Liberation Day.” The White House said that the wide-reaching tariffs were introduced to tackle “large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits,” and while varying rates have been imposed on the majority of U.S. trade partners, a baseline 10 percent tariff on all U.S. imports is active.
Global markets have experienced a period of significant uncertainty since Trump unveiled the tariffs, and he later backtracked on the initial announcement after it sent Wall Street into a tailspin, only to later announce additional tariffs targeting specific industries.
What To Know
On Wednesday, CNBC’s Megan Casella asked Trump about the “TACO trade,” theory, which has been circulating on Wall Street and was coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong this month.
Casella asked the president: “They’re saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats and that’s why markets are higher this week. What’s your response to that?”
The president fired back at Casella, accusing her of asking a “nasty” question and demanding she never ask it again. “Don’t ever say what you said,” Trump told Casella, “That’s a nasty question. To me, that’s the nastiest question.”
The term, though, has quickly caught on, with TACO Trump memes being posted across the internet.
On X, formerly Twitter, Lucas Sanders, an account with 33,000 followers and identifies with the Democratic Party, according to the bio, posted: “Hey everyone. Let’s get #TACOTrump trending,” accompanied by a picture of a taco with the president’s face superimposed on it. The post has been viewed more than 270,000 times as of reporting.
Some users have posted acrostics, with the meaning of TACO over pictures of Trump. Other users have edited pictures of Trump wearing the “Make America Great Again” cap to read “Trump Always Chickens Out” instead.
Similar images have flooded Instagram and TikTok, with some accounts being set up under variations of the name “Taco Trump.”
On TikTok, a video posted by the account Binary Infections shows multiple AI-generated versions of the president, who has been edited to look like a chicken eating a taco, running through the New York Stock Exchange. The video has been viewed 160,000 times as of reporting.
What People Are Saying
President Donald Trump, responding to CNBC’s Megan Casella on Wednesday: “This country was dying….You know, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world….Six months ago, this country was stone-cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country people didn’t think was going to survive and you ask a nasty question like that.”
The account @CrockerBoy on X, in a post viewed 55,800 times as of reporting: “ZERO Trade Deals. Lots of talk. Lots of promises. Lots of bragging. ZERO Trade Deals.”
