Trump says 'fake' is 'one of the greatest of all terms I've come up with'

President Trump and Mike Huckabee on TBN

(Image credit: TBN/Screenshot)

published 8 October 2017

President Trump seemed to suggest he deserves credit for the creation of the word "fake," or perhaps the phrase "fake news," while speaking with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on the launch episode of Huckabee's TBN show Saturday night.

"The media is — really, the word, I think one of the greatest of all terms I've come up with is 'fake,'" Trump said. "I guess other people have used it, perhaps, over the years, but I've never noticed it." If Trump is indeed claiming the word or phrase is primarily of his origination, this would not be the first time he has been incorrect in that regard: In May, the president claimed to have coined the phrase "priming the pump," which was popularized as an economic term in the 1930s.

Trump also defended his decision to throw paper towels to survivors of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, claiming he threw the towels at the crowd's request. "They had these beautiful, soft towels. Very good towels, and I came in and there was a crowd of a lot of people, and they were screaming, and they were loving everything," he said. "I was having fun; they were having fun. They said, 'Throw 'em to me! Throw 'em to me, Mr. President!' So next day [critics] said, ‘Oh it was so disrespectful to the people.' It was just a made-up thing. And also when I walked in, the cheering was incredible." Trump accused the news media of deceptively lowering the volume of the cheers.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.