President Donald Trump has a new word fixation, but it appears he does not fully understand its meaning — and members of his staff seem less-than-reluctant to tell him.
In the last week, Trump, 79, has used the word “excursion” dozens of times to describe his unauthorized war in Iran. He often makes a waving hand motion to describe what he apparently means.
The word “excursion” usually refers to a quick, leisurely vacation, but the president has applied that to describe his deadly war.
Some Trump aids told Zeteo that they believe Trump has confused the term “military incursion,” which is defined as invasion or attack, especially a sudden or brief one, with a “military excursion.”
Sources said that they or their coworkers have used the term “incursion” in front of Trump, which is where he may have picked up the term, but Trump is playing loose with the word’s definition.
“We took a little excursion because we felt we had to, to get rid of some evil, and I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion,” Trump said Tuesday from his Doral, Florida resort.
“We did a little excursion, we had to take this couple weeks, few weeks of excursion,” Trump said the next day at a factory in Ohio.
Some officials in the White House said that they are afraid to correct the president on his gaffe, and others said a correction wouldn’t even matter.
“I’m not telling him,” one administration official told Zeteo, implying that correcting Trump would be “a fool’s errand,” and that “doing so would likely get them yelled at.”
“We say ‘incursion,’ the boss says ‘excursion.’ It’s not a big deal,” another official asserted.
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House for comment.
Reporters have attempted to correct Trump on the word’s meaning, especially as the war in Iran enters its third week.
“You just said it is a ‘little excursion,’ and you said it is a ‘war.’ So, which one is it?” one reporter asked on Wednesday.
Trump replied, “It’s both. It’s a, uh, an excursion that will keep us out of a war.”
