May 11, 2017

Trump Thinks He Invented the Phrase “Prime the Pump”

Bill Ingalls/NASA via ZUMA

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Jonah Goldberg points out the following Trump timeline:

2016: “Well, sometimes you have to prime the pump,” he says. “So sometimes in order to get jobs going and the country going, because, look, we’re at 1% growth.”

Late 2016: “We are also going to lower our business tax rate from 35 percent all the way down to 15 percent. That’s going to be big. Going to prime the pump. Got to prime the pump.“

Today: “We have to prime the pump….Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago.”

This is not good. “What is the right way to interpret Trump’s statement that he coined the phrase ‘prime the pump’ a few days ago?” asks Goldberg. Unfortunately, I think we all know the answer: Trump is 70 years old and his cognitive skills are deserting him. The evidence for this is becoming scarily abundant.

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