Earlier this year, Donald Trump made it clear that he didn’t realise the word ‘dumb’ has a ‘b’ in it. Now, he’s claiming this is a very common understanding of the word, suggesting not-good things about his literacy:
This is actual psychosis.
He learned several months ago that dumb has a B when he told someone his brilliant idea for “dumocrats.” This left him a severe narcissistic injury. So he has constructed, through sheer repetition, an alternate reality where “most people don’t know.” https://t.co/mZtqXQy9XU
— Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist
(@jimstewartson) September 3, 2026
Trump… it’s D-U-M-B
This tiring story began earlier this year when Trump began referring to his opponents as the ‘Dumocrats’. At one point, he would claim the word ‘dumb’ does not in fact have a ‘b’ in it, as Yahoo News reported:
Donald Trump stunned a Las Vegas audience by explaining that the word “dumb” does not contain the letter “B.” The president made this remark while discussing his preferred nickname for political opponents. This came during a speech about economic policy.
In his own words, Trump said:
Nobody knows that ‘dumb’ doesn’t have a ‘b’
Due to his awkward use of a double negative, this statement is close to being accurate. You’ll notice it’s the opposite of what he’s saying now, though.
This is what he claimed in the clip at the top: Clearly, all eyes are on Trump for his explanations.
if you replace the ‘E’ with a ‘U’, instead of ‘Democrat’, you have ‘Dumocrat’. And most people don’t know that dumb has a B at the end. You know, they think it’s D-U-M, and that’s OK. So it’s a one letter change. And you go ‘no more E, you just put a D [sic], and you got a Dumocrat’. And that’s because their policy is so bad.
If nothing else, we can all agree that the sign of a successful nickname is having to continuously explain it to everyone—especially when Trump is involved.
Language
Interestingly, America came close to not spelling ‘dumb’ with a ‘b’. The reason American spellings are different to Standard English is because dictionary writer Noah Webster made several purposeful changes. Often these changes revolved around removing French spellings, e.g. changing ‘centre’ to ‘center’. Oddly, this means that American English is less French than English English. Furthermore, it’s worth noting that this language shift happened long before trump made any headlines.
Webster wanted to go further, but spellers struggled to wrap their heads around his proposals. As Mental Floss reported, Trump’s aborted spellings included the following (note ‘thumb’ at 14):
- **Cloke:**Cloak
- Soop: Soup
- **Masheen:**Machine
- Tung: Tongue
- Greef: Grief
- Dawter: Daughter
- Korus: Chorus
- Nightmar: Nightmare
- Turnep: Turnip
- Iland: Island
- Porpess: Porpoise
- Steddy: Steady
- Hainous: Heinous
- Thum: Thumb
- Gillotin: Guillotine
- Spunge: Sponge
- Ake: Ache
- Wimmin: Women
- Determin: Determine
- Giv: Give
- **Bilt:**Built
- Beleev: Believe
- Grotesk: Grotesque
- Stile: Style
- Neer: Near
- Sley: Sleigh
We don’t know about you, but the thought of Spunge Bob Square Pants is a hainous and grotesk nightmarin our opinion. Indeed, imagine trump assigning new spellings for cartoon characters!
Anyway, Trump didn’t know about any of this; he just can’t spell. And while that’s a worrying thing to say about the so-called ‘Leader of the Free World’, it’s far from the worst thing about him. Either way, the US president is never far from controversy.
Featured image via the Canary
By Willem Moore
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