Top 5 Nicknames Donald Trump Has Given His Political Adversaries

This week, President Donald Trump absolutely obliterated Steve Bannon.

He said:

“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.

“Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base — he’s only in it for himself.

“Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.

“We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.”

That is absolutely brutal. He also nicknamed Steve Bannon “Sloppy Steve,” which set political tongues wagging. Chris Cillizza at CNN has a running list of the top twelve Trump nicknames… and — believe it or not — Sloppy Steve didn’t even make the top five. (Click over to read all of them.)

Here are the winners:

5. “Little Marco”: There was a time during 2016 that this one was my favorite. While it wasn’t strictly accurate — Rubio is not particularly short — it stuck because it had the added meaning that the Florida senator was just sort of a minor player. Not a big enough character to hold the national stage. “Little Marco Rubio, the lightweight no show Senator from Florida, is set to be the ‘puppet’ of the special interest Koch brothers,” tweeted Trump in February 2016. “WATCH!” I will!

4. “Pocahontas”: Offensive? Absolutely. Hard to forget? Also yes. Trump’s nickname for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, has its genesis in her claim that she had Native American heritage — 1/32nd to be exact. The claim became an issue in Warren’s 2012 Senate campaign, but she still easily beat incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown. If Warren runs in 2020 — and she is certainly thinking about it — get ready to hear “Pocahontas” a whole lot more.

3. “Low Energy” Jeb: Like all of Trump’s best nicknames, this one had the ring of truth. Jeb(!) was a low-key presence on the campaign trail at a time when people wanted a candidate to take a flamethrower to the nation’s capital. That the nickname also doubled as a not-that-subtle shot at Jeb’s masculinity and virility was not by accident. That it clearly irritated Bush made it even better (for Trump).

2. “Lyin’ Ted“: I can’t tell if this nickname is really that good or I am simply biased toward it because I heard it so many times during the 2016 Republican primary campaign. What I doknow is this nickname very much stuck to the Texas Senator, encapsulating for lots of people what they didn’t trust about him. “He holds up the Bible and then he lies,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last year.

1. “Little Rocket Man”: Put aside the potential for nuclear annihilation inherent in taunting the unstable dictator of a rogue regime and it’s just hard to beat this one. Insulting and fitting all in one.

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