President Donald Trump put his unique vocabulary on display once again this week.
On Monday, May 19, the president signed a new executive order that gives the manufacturers of prescription drugs 30 days to meaningfully lower the cost of their medications.
If that deadline isn’t met, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will be tasked with developing new regulations that equate U.S. drug prices with lower costs paid in other countries.
In explaining his plan to reporters, Trump had something of a linguistic revelation.
“Basically, what we’re doing is equalizing. There’s a new word that I came up with, which is probably the best word,” he said.
“We’re gonna equalize, where we’re all gonna pay the same. We’re gonna pay what Europe’s gonna pay,” he continued.
Of course, Trump isn’t the first to use the word “equalize.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says the first known usage of the word happened in 1599, and it remains common in modern times.
The president himself has even used the word multiple times in the past, including in his address to a joint session of Congress on March 5.
While claiming that the United States had contributed significantly more to Ukraine’s defense against Russia than other European allies, Trump said, “Biden has authorized more money in this fight than Europe has spent by billions and billions of dollars. It’s hard to believe that they wouldn’t have stopped it and said at some point, come on, let’s equalize. You got to be equal to us. But that didn’t happen.”
However, this may, in fact, be the president’s most viral vocabulary moment since he became fascinated with the word “groceries” while giving his “Liberation Day” speech on April 2, announcing sweeping tariffs and promising savings for U.S. consumers at the supermarket.
“It’s such an old-fashioned term but a beautiful term: groceries,” he mused. “It sort of says a bag with different things in it.”
