While Donald Trump eventually settled on “Ron DeSanctimonious” as his preferred derogatory nickname for Ron DeSantis, he spent months workshopping other options. One had the potential to be a truly iconic Trump insult: “Meatball Ron.” It was funny, naughty, childish, and a bit mysterious — all qualities that make a great schoolyard insult. Yet Trump quickly ruled it out, deeming the moniker “totally inappropriate”:
Trump never explained what was so inappropriate about the term “meatball.” Presumably he did not want to risk offending Italian Americans, though the term isn’t a well-known insult for that group.
Unsurprisingly, Trump seems far less concerned about being accused of saying offensive things about a non-white Republican primary opponent. When New Hampshire primary polls showed Nikki Haley gaining on Trump earlier this month, he started pulling from the racist playbook he used against Barack Obama. Trump floated an absurd birther conspiracy on Truth Social, suggesting Haley is ineligible for the presidency because her parents are Indian immigrants. Then, on Tuesday, he referred to her as Nikki “Nimrada” Haley, a racist dog whistle meant to suggest there’s something foreign and sneaky about the former South Carolina governor, who was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. (Her campaign has said she’s gone by her middle name since birth, and Haley is her married name.)
On Friday morning Trump signaled that he’s not concerned in the slightest about accusations of racism when he butchered Haley’s first name again on Truth Social. He used a new misspelling, “Nimbra,” three times in one post, so it clearly wasn’t a one-off typo:
Seven minutes later, Trump posted the message “The service for Melania’s mother was truly a beautiful one. I’d like to thank everyone for all of your prayers and best wishes!” So, for the record, his first priority this morning was to make a subtly racist attack on Haley, and his second was to say something nice about the service for his late mother-in-law.
When asked about Trump’s new names for her during a CNN town hall on Thursday, Haley brushed off his attempts to otherize her.
“And look, the name-calling — I know President Trump well. That’s what he does when he feels threatened. That’s what he does when he feels insecure,” Haley said, per The Hill. “I don’t take these things personally; it doesn’t bother me. I know him very well, and this is what he does. I know that I am a threat; I know that’s why he’s doing that.”
Polls suggest Haley probably isn’t a huge threat to Trump’s nomination, but she’s right that this is just what he does — and he’ll probably keep at it. To this day, Trump continues to rant about “Barack HUSSEIN Obama,” who hasn’t been in office in seven years (though Trump claims, absurdly, that he’s still running the White House as Joe Biden’s puppetmaster).
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