Trump is so inventive that he coins wonderful new phrases at the drop of a hat. Prime the pump will now have Trump’s picture next to it when you check out its figurative use in a dictionary.
Or not.
From an interview with The Economist in the link above:
Merriam-Webster is quick to call bullshit on this. The figurative use of the phrase has been around since at least 1933. But fair enough, we can all make the mistake of thinking we’ve coined something ourselves if we haven’t heard it before, right?
The problem with that though is that Trump has not only heard it before but has used it on multiple occasions in the past as The Washington Post illustrates. I find Trump forgetting that he’s used the phrase many times before very, very worrying. This is the guy who is tasked with presiding over the most powerful country on the planet and he has a fucking memory like this? That is disturbing.
As much as I haaaaaaaaate Trump - and I hate him a lot - I have a feeling that he wasn’t saying he coined the term but he was saying he just thought of applying it to the tax situation a couple days ago and is proud of himself for making the connection.
Back when, the only way to make an over-the-top spoof character like Austin Powers work as a relatable protagonist was to supply a more over-the-top villain in the form of Doctor Evil – and, when they inevitably got to a point where they needed an even more over-the-top exemplar of silliness to serve as that guy’s backstory? Well, the best they could come up with – as a silly gag – was Doc’s father.
“He would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark.”
See, they’d written themselves into a corner, and had to invent someone implausible.
I feel like we are— at most— weeks away from a press interview in which Trump wears a saucepan on his head, bangs his fists on his desk and shouts “ME GO POOPY!” Followed by a haggard Steven Mnuchin: “I think what the president is *trying *to say…”
Interviewer in Italics from the Economist, while Trump is in plain old text.
**But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?
It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two years where you’ll…you understand the expression “prime the pump”?
Yes.
We have to prime the pump.
It’s very Keynesian.
We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?
Priming the pump?
Yeah, have you heard it?
Yes.
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 and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.
It’s…
Yeah, what you have to do is you have to put something in before you can get something out.**
This finally explains why – even when given the chance to clarify, and say that he’d only meant it metaphorically – Trump patiently explained that, uh, no, he meant that Obama was, literally, the founder of ISIS: he must’ve heard Obama say “ISIS”.
I agree with you. “Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?” It’s still silly to think that applying an existing phrase to a new situation is a leap of cleverness (and I doubt he’s the first to use it this way), but I think it’s clear he’s not claiming to have coined the phrase itself. I’m actually surprised that he understands the phrase and used it in a context where it made sense.