Trump Insiders Spill Why Nobody Will Correct His Chaotic Gaffes
Trump has used his new favorite word to improperly describe his deadly war more than a dozen times this week.
It appears that President Donald Trump has taken a liking to a new word—a term, however, whose meaning he does not seem to fully grasp; and members of his staff, for their part, show no notable hesitation in pointing this out to him.
Over the past week, Trump,79, has used the word “excursion” dozens of times to describe his unauthorized war in Iran. He often accompanied the word with a hand gesture, seemingly intending to signal the specific meaning he ascribed to it.
Generally speaking, the word “excursion” denotes a quick, leisurely getaway; yet the President has employed it to characterize his bloody conflict.
Several Trump advisors confided to Zeteo that they believe the President has conflated the term “military incursion”—defined as an invasion or attack, particularly if sudden or brief—with the phrase “military excursion.”
Sources indicated that they themselves, or their colleagues, had used the term “incursion” in Trump’s presence—which is likely how he discovered the word—though the President treats the term’s definition with considerable latitude.
Speaking on Tuesday from his resort in Doral, Florida, Trump stated: “We went on a little ‘excursion’ because we felt it was necessary—to get rid of some undesirable elements. And I think you will find that it will be a short-lived ‘excursion’.”
The following day, while speaking at a factory in Ohio, Trump remarked: “We went on a little ‘excursion’; we simply had to dedicate these two weeks—or these few weeks—to an ‘excursion’.”
Some White House officials confided that they were hesitant to correct the President’s slip of the tongue, while others felt that a correction would be futile in any case.
“I wouldn’t correct him,” an administration official told Zeteo, implicitly suggesting that correcting Trump’s errors is a “mission impossible”—a pointless endeavor—and that “doing so would likely result only in getting yelled at and reprimanded.”
Another official stated: “We say ‘incursion,’ whereas the boss says ‘excursion’; it really doesn’t warrant all this fuss.”
Journalists attempted to rectify Trump’s understanding of the word’s meaning, particularly as the conflict in Iran enters its third week.
“You just said it is a ‘little excursion,’ and you said it is a ‘war.’ So, which one is it?” one reporter asked on Wednesday.
Trump replied: “It’s both. It’s… uh… an ‘excursion’ that will prevent us from sliding into war.”
