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Once upon a time, American presidents could move a nation with words.
Lincoln gave poetry to pain. Franklin D. Roosevelt soothed a broken people by a fireside. Kennedy gave us the moon. Obama gave us hope, cadence, and commas in all the right places.
And then came Donald J. Trump — the first president who made syntax surrender and grammar go golfing at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump doesn’t speak so much as he riff-raffles. Each rally is part circus, part stand-up routine, part therapy session for the perpetually aggrieved. He doesn’t need a teleprompter; he needs a rimshot and a spotlight. When he declares, “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,” you half-expect the band to cue a laugh track.
From “Yes We Can” to “Covfefe”
Obama spoke in paragraphs; Trump speaks in hashtags. Obama’s lines could be carved on monuments; Trump’s belong on restroom walls — preferably next to “Flush Twice for Fake News.”
Where Obama reached for the moral arc of the universe, Trump reached for all-caps on Truth Social. He massacred grammar like a war crime: “No Smocking Gun,” “Boarder Security,” “I have the best words.”
The man has turned typos into talking points. Linguists now classify covfefe as a national mood — the sound of a republic that once had hope and now has autocorrect fatigue.
The President as Punchline
Trump is the only world leader whose speeches are funny — and not on purpose. His rallies have more callbacks than Netflix specials. He repeats lines like an old comic trying to stretch five minutes of material into an hour. “We’re going to win so much, you’ll get tired of winning!” he bellows, as if he’s auditioning for Vegas. There’s timing, tension, and release — every hallmark of a comedian. The difference? A comedian knows it’s a joke.
He is, in essence, a stand-up in a suit with nuclear codes — minus the self-awareness, . Each gaffe is a brand extension. Each ramble, an entertaining feature. It’s Charlie Chaplin in a lunatic asylum, broadcast live!
The Foreign-Policy Punchline
Recently, in what sounded less like statecraft and more like a WWE promo, Trump thundered at Hamas: “They’re going to disarm, because they said they were going to disarm. And if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them. They know I’m not playing games.”
It was diplomacy rewritten as barroom bravado — the foreign-policy version of “My way or the hallway.” You half expect him to drop the mic, roll up his sleeve, flex his tie, and shout, “Try me, folks!”
This is not the language of a statesman; it’s the vocabulary of a bouncer. It’s world affairs explained through elbows and ego. The audience laughs — the globe cringes.
The Cowboy President Declares Everyone ‘Dead’
Recently, in one of his geopolitical shootouts, Trump turned his rhetorical six-shooter toward the Global South. The man who once called the UN “dead” and India a “dead economy” has now pronounced, with cowboy finality, “BRICS is dead.” You half expect him to tip his Stetson, squint into the sun, and mutter, “This town ain’t big enough for five emerging markets.”
It’s the foreign policy of a gunslinger — every disagreement ends with a declaration of death. Or, an 100% Import tariffs. Alliances don’t need analysis; they just need a tombstone and theme music. Trump doesn’t negotiate — he narrates. The world is his Western, and everyone else is either “weak,” , “a bad guy”,“dead,” or “tremendously failing.”
The Death of Presidential Eloquence
Under Trump, the presidential podium became a prop, not a pulpit. The Oval Office once demanded gravitas; he turned it into open-mic night. The presidential voice — once solemn, deliberate, even sacred — now sounds like a diner monologue at 3 a.m. between refills of Diet Coke.
He replaced empathy with applause lines, policy with punchlines, and the State of the Union with the State of Delusion. Gone are the careful phrases that steadied a nation; in their place, tweets that rattle markets. Gone are the soaring sentences of “Yes We Can.”
Now we have: “You know it, everybody knows it, people tell me, they say it — tremendous.”
Trump has done what no foreign enemy ever could: he made the English language surrender — and left average Americans dipping their heads in shame as the world watches, half in disbelief, half in laughter, at this accidental stand-up comedian!
Mohan Murti is a Advocate, former Europe Managing Director of Reliance Industries, columnist, and commentator on global affairs.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.