Crooked, Crazy, Crying: Trump’s top nicknames for opponents

Mini, Crooked, Crazy, Crying: while they may sound like names of the Seven Dwarves in the famous Disney film Snow White, US President Donald Trump has applied these adjectives to his opponents in the Democratic party.

Here is a list of Trump’s most notorious nicknames:

Mini Mike

Trump took to Twitter on Sunday to blast fellow New York billionaire and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg as “Mini Mike” – referencing Bloomberg’s 5’ 7” height. The day before, Trump mocked the former New York City mayor’s stature during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference by crouching down behind the podium in an imitation of Bloomberg at the recent Democratic debate.

Last month Trump called Bloomberg a “5’4” mass of dead energy” and said Bloomberg wanted a box to stand on for the Democratic debate stage. Bloomberg’s campaign denied the claim.

Sleepy Joe

Trump brought up “Sleepy Joe” in Sunday’s Twitter thread, in reference to former US Vice President Joe Biden, who served under Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama and is now running to be the Democratic contender against Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

“Congratulations to Sleepy Joe Biden!” Trump posted, following Biden’s victory in South Carolina’s Democratic primary. The nickname draws attention to Biden’s recent verbal gaffes. He described himself as a Senate candidate rather than a presidential candidate last week, and called a young woman a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier” at a campaign stop in New Hampshire last month.

“I am a young, vibrant man. I look at Joe, I don’t know about him,” Trump said in remarks to the press in April. In response to the nickname, Biden has taken to calling Trump “clown.”

Crazy Bernie

Trump also shouted out US Senator Bernie Sanders on Sunday, arguably the top contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

“Democrats are working hard to destroy the name and reputation of Crazy Bernie Sanders, and take the nomination away from him!” said Trump in a tweet.

Trump unveiled his “Crazy Bernie” nickname back in 2016, when Sanders was competing with Hillary Clinton for that year’s Democratic presidential nomination.

Since then Trump has doubled down on the nickname, saying Sanders’ “hair is getting whiter and whiter, and he’s getting crazier and crazier,” during a rally in Pennsylvania in August 2018.

Sanders responded to the nickname in February 2019, saying “What’s crazy is that we have a president who is a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and a fraud,” in a tweet.

Cryin’ Chuck

Sanders’ colleague, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer from New York, also found himself in the line of Trump’s ridicule.

After Schumer seemingly choked back tears while denouncing Trump’s immigration and travel ban in 2017, the nickname “Cryin’ Chuck” was born.

At the time Trump called out Schumer for his “fake tears.”

“I’m going to ask him: Who is his acting coach?” Trump said to the press. “I know him very well. I don’t see him as a crier.”

Schumer’s office responded by saying Trump should “learn that name-calling is not going to solve the many problems this administration has already brought upon itself.”

Pocahontas

One of Trump’s jibes went so far as to bring up DNA genetic testing. Since 2016 Trump has referred to Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas”, the Native American princess who promoted peace between English colonists and members of her Powhatan tribe in the early 1600s.

“Goofy Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to as Pocahontas because she faked the fact she is native American, is a lowlife!” Trump said in a tweet in May 2016.

Warren’s political opponents accused her of exaggerating her Native American ancestry in 2012, a charge that followed her until she took a DNA test and released the results in October 2018 that showed she is between 1/32 and 1/1,024 Native American.

The Native American community in the US issued statements asking Warren to retract her claims of Native American ancestry, and she later apologized for identifying her race as “American Indian” on an official government document.

When Warren entered the 2020 presidential race last February, Trump asked if she would run “as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore?”

Shifty Schiff

Trump bestowed Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California the nickname “Shifty Schiff,” following Schiff’s involvement in the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the House’s impeachment trial against the president.

Trump, who has called on Schiff to resign from Congress and said he should be investigated for treason, has also given him the nickname “Little Pencil Neck” - though uses the “Shifty Schiff” alliteration more frequently.

“He’s got the smallest, thinnest neck I’ve ever seen,” said Trump last March.

Crooked Hillary

In April 2016, seven months before the presidential election, Trump unveiled his most known moniker to date: Crooked Hillary, referring to Democratic rival and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

According to famous American cartoonist and political commentator Scott Adams, the nickname came with confirmation bias in that “Trump knew that there would be lots of opportunities to remind voters that Clinton was up to something ‘crooked.’”

“The Clinton Foundation and her hacked e-mail server provided plenty of fodder. Once Trump primed you to see Clinton as crooked, it was easy to see everything she did as fitting that description, even when it didn’t,” Adams wrote in his book “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter.”

The name stuck when accusations arose that the Democratic National Convention rigged the 2016 primary process in favor of Clinton and against Sanders.

Trump has baited Clinton into running against him again this year, saying in October he thinks “Crooked Hillary Clinton” should enter the presidential race “to try and steal it away from Uber Left Elizabeth Warren.”

Clinton responded in a tweet, saying “Don’t tempt me.”