Trump's nickname for Joe Biden may have flopped

Joe Biden.
(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

President Trump has a penchant for tagging his political opponents with simple, but biting nicknames. The one he chose for his presumptive Democratic presidential challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, doesn't seem to have landed like those in the past, however, Axios reports.

It's well-known Trump refers to Biden as "sleepy Joe," but so far, at least judging by Google search trends, voters apparently don't associate the moniker with Biden all that much. Trump dubbed his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, as "crooked" Hillary, which prompted far more searches than "sleepy Joe." As analysts noted, there are likely several reasons for this. Regardless, it could be a small, but telling data point that shows Trump's patented insults may not have the same affect in 2020 now that the novelty has worn off.

See more

Of course, it could just be that "sleepy" isn't particularly evocative, which is perhaps why the Trump campaign has recently starting trying out "corrupt Joe Biden." Read more at Axios.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.