A blowup Trump chicken on the night of his 2020 defeat.Michael Brochstein—ZUMA Wire
The Democratic Party has commissioned a taco truck to serve free lunch outside the Republican National Committee’s DC headquarters beginning at noon on Tuesday.
“Trump always chickens out—we’re just bringing the tacos to match.”
The giveaway is not just to mark taco Tuesday, says a Democratic National Committee staffer who tipped Mother Jones off about the free grub. The food is also meant to get under the skin of President Donald Trump, who has recently become associated with the acronym TACO—shorthand for Trump Always Chickens Out.
Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined the term in early May to describe Trump’s habit of announcing sweeping tariff threats only to—in the wake of the inevitable market plunge—renege and give countries more time to negotiate. Most recently he delayed a previously announced 50 percent tariff on the European Union by more than a month, from June 1 to July 9.
Financial analysts have shared similar but less cheeky descriptions of Trump’s tendency to backtrack. Shortly after Trump announced those now-delayed EU tariffs, Salomon Fiedler of the German bank Berenberg offered his own prediction. “Wild threats by Trump are not unusual,” he said, according to the New York Times. “Given the damage the U.S. would do to itself with this tariff, he will probably not follow through.”
But Democrats are betting that saying TACO just rolls off the tongue better. Trump “talks a big game, caves, and then leaves working families and small businesses to deal with the fallout,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. “Trump always chickens out—we’re just bringing the tacos to match.”
The acronym has gone mainstream enough to come up during a White House press conference. When a reporter asked Trump about it on May 28, Trump rebuffed her, calling her question “nasty.” With any luck, Tuesday’s tacos won’t be.
