If you’re going to trot out a now-antiquated acronym about President Donald Trump that implies he backs away from tough foreign policy, it helps if you’re not doing so at the very moment a Trump-brokered deal was freeing the last of the Israeli hostages in Gaza and effectively ending Hamas’ reign of terror that began on Oct. 7, 2023.
In that sense, I suppose, you have to hand it to Reuters: In the midst of all this, they decided it was a good call to publish a piece with the acronym TACO — or “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
In times like these, people are told to read the room. In this case, Reuters probably should have read the entire Middle East:
Celebrations broke out in both Gaza and Israel after the announcement of a ceasefire plan agreement, after an agonizing two years of war. @JDiamond1 reports. pic.twitter.com/8urlT5IhrG
— CNN International PR (@cnnipr) October 10, 2025
Granted, this didn’t happen in the context of the peace deal, which was effectively brought about by Trump. Rather, as CNBC noted in its version of the piece published at 3:24 a.m. ET on Monday, American currency “recovered from a selloff in early trade on Monday as investors hoped Washington may temper its latest escalation of the trade war with Beijing, while political developments in France and Japan undermined the euro and the yen.”
The U.S. Dollar was down a bit after a new round of tariffs was announced on China, Reuters reported. Which led to this pull quote:
That revived fears of Trump’s Liberation Day rollout of sweeping tariffs in April, sparking a selloff in stocks and cryptocurrencies on Friday.
“Certainly it’s pretty nervous out there,” said Tim Kelleher, head of institutional FX Sales at Commonwealth Bank in Auckland.
“If you look at the U.S. and China stuff, it looks like Trump has done a bit of a TACO again and softened his tone,” he added, referring to a trading rule of thumb that “Trump always chickens out.”
Again, the timing’s the thing. It was clear over the weekend that a ceasefire was imminent, essentially brokered by pressure from the guy who “always chickens out.”
About an hour before this was published, roughly thereabouts, the first hostages were released. By the time it was morning on the East Coast, all the living hostages had been released, and the guy who always chickens out was in the Middle East declaring that the war was over, the good guys had won, and the bad guys had not.
Nice timing, folks.
Just in case you needed a reminder: TACO became a popular acronym among Wall Street types in the aftermath of Trump’s April Liberation Day tariff package. The term spiked in Google searches in May and basically disappeared by July.
Here’s “TACO trump” in red and “Trump Always Chickens Out” in blue from Google Trends, which tracks searches:
As you note, it spiked when the term first went viral in May, plateaued for a bit, and then dropped off dramatically after June 21.
Why that date, felicitously? Well, on June 22, American B-2 bombers hit Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — with virtually no serious Iranian retaliation.
The Iran-Israel War — also known as the Twelve-Day War — would end three days after that, almost certainly because of that. Remember, this was all going to touch off World War III, according to the left. I suppose it did, if you count it as a war in the world that lasted three more days.
But yes, TACO.
The end of the Israel-Hamas affair was somewhat more solemn, and the role Trump played much more well-defined. Of all the days to bring out that acronym again, this wasn’t it — even if the quote had been made before the hostage releases, and even if it wasn’t in relation to Israel or Hamas.
And this is one of the English language’s two major U.S.-based wire services. Again: You cannot loathe our media enough.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.