“Many such cases.” “Many people are saying this.”
If you search for “many such cases” on X, you’ll see new posts of the phrase seemingly every minute, primarily applied to nonpolitical contexts like work anxiety or the real estate market. Google Trends shows both expressions increasing in usage since the mid-2010s.
This is remarkable, given how quickly memes typically die out. Internet humor usually follows transient fads, but these phrases associated with the president seem to have found a more permanent home in the English language.
That last sentence borrowed the grammatical structure of a 2016 meme where Mr. Trump described NAFTA as “the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever.” Since then, the joke has become a kind of syntactic skeleton called a phrasal template: a grammatical place holder with empty slots to fill. Now any concept can be loaded into the template of “[superlative] X in/on the Y in the history of Z, maybe ever” — making it easier to apply to new scenarios and outlive the original meme.
Mr. Trump’s speech is chock-full of phrasal templates. “Make X Y Again” and “ Thank you X, very cool ” are just two more examples regularly applied to normal situations. Because the Mad Libs - style adaptability feels intuitive to other contexts, the language spreads. Graphic design enthusiasts want to “ make logos cool again,” and others say “thank you very cool” to provocative fan art of their video game characters.
This didn’t happen with previous presidents in the online era. Joe Biden certainly had catchphrases, like “folks” and “malarkey.” Barack Obama would often punctuate speeches with “Let me be clear,” and George W. Bush was well known for his “ Bushisms.” Yet none of these phrases became a part of the average person’s day-to-day speech.
Researchers at the University of Chicago have found Mr. Trump to have a quantifiably unique syntactic style compared with those of other politicians. His word choice is less predictable to large language models, a type of A.I. that powers programs like ChatGPT. Others have noted that he disproportionately appends extraneous language to his sentences — like “believe me” or “maybe ever” at the end of the trade deal meme.
Each medium in its own way affects how messages are diffused and can therefore have an impact on the success of political candidates. For example, it’s generally accepted that the medium of TV played a role in John Kennedy’s election over Richard Nixon in 1960, because Mr. Nixon was less photogenic.
Mr. Trump’s ideas begin as ridiculous and are easily parodied on the internet — at this point, they’re already affecting our head space. When those parodies become a subconscious part of language, their overt power is diluted but the underlying idea remains there, continuing to subtly represent his presence.
The fact that we’re talkinglike Donald Trump could mean that we’re starting to think like him as well.
More on Trump
[
We’re Trapped in Trump’s Reality. This Is How We Escape It.
Aug. 11, 2025
[
The Pointless Triumph of a Hapless President
July 4, 2025
](https://archive.is/o/OOtTG/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/04/opinion/trump-gop-republican.html)
[
Trump’s Oval Office Is a Gilded Rococo Nightmare. Help.
May 27, 2025
](https://archive.is/o/OOtTG/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/opinion/trump-oval-office-rococo.html)
- Fox News Warrior Takes on Prosecutor Role in Trump’s D.C. Crackdown
- Hiker in Tennessee Who Picked Up a Venomous Snake Dies After Being Bitten
- 7 Pilates Moves for Better Posture
- Life in a City Where English Is the Minority Language
- This World-Renowned Negotiator Says Trump’s Secret Weapon Is Empathy
- Ronnie Rondell, Stuntman Set on Fire for Pink Floyd Cover, Dies at 88
- On Sicily’s Rocky Coast, an Event Planner Created His Own Fantasy
- $5,000-Per-Plate Dinner Tests Museum Ban on Political Fund-Raisers
- What Can I Do About My Terrible Neighbor?