Every presidential administration uses messaging to manipulate facts and explain inconvenient truths. But Trump 2.0 rivals the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984 in its assaults on language, logic and memory.
Winston Smith and the other dedicated messengers who worked for Big Brother’s government spent their workdays parroting Party slogans — WAR IS PEACE, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH — and promoting Newspeak, doublethink and reality control, all tools people could use to achieve victory over their own memories.
Citizens engaged in weekly Two Minute Hate sessions focused on the Enemy of the People. Thoughtcrime was punishable by death, and history was routinely erased and recreated to mean whatever Big Brother says. “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” Orwell wrote.
Here are some sample entries from the Trump administration’s Newspeak dictionary.
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
administrative error
The reason a Maryland man was deported to a megaprison in El Salvador. Note: Admission of error does not imply any willingness to fix said error.
Biden, Joe
He who is to be blamed when anything goes wrong. One example of the hundreds of times Trump has mentioned Biden: Claiming Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would not have shared Houthi attack plans on the insecure Signal messaging service if Joe Biden had attacked the Houthis earlier. Problems also can be blamed on Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, etc.
birthright citizenship
The Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
This does not truly mean what it seems to mean. Trump offered the proper interpretation in a Jan. 20 Executive Order: “But the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”
America is the only country that offers birthright citizenship, just as President Trump claims. (You can ignore the reports about birthright citizenship in Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gambia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Lesotho, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uruguay, Venezuela.)
day of love
January 6, 2021, when peaceful patriots attended Trump rallies and didn’t assault anyone but instead took a sightseeing tour of D.C. while members of antifa brutally attacked officers at the U.S. Capitol.
DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion)
Betsy DeVos
Mistakenly praised by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in Trump 1.0, DEI is now understood to be worthy only of hate. Even scientific terms such as “biodiversity” must be scrubbed.
Associate DEI with death and destruction by blaming it for the deaths of 67 people in a collision between an airplane and a military helicopter above the Potomac River.
Among the newly banned words: Gender. Transgender. Nonbinary. Pregnant people. Assigned male at birth. Antiracist. Trauma. Hate speech. Intersectional. Multicultural. Oppression.
Disinformation, misinformation
Anything Trump declares false. Consequently, anything declared to be disinformation or misinformation by liberal fact-checking groups or elite “experts” can be regarded as true and trustworthy.
efficiency
The stated purpose of the Department of Government Efficiency, which has cut more than 120,000 federal jobs. The fact that remaining employees at impacted agencies now get much less done is a bonus.
emergency
Anything Trump declares an emergency.
An “invasion” by immigrants is a “NATIONAL EMERGENCY AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER” requiring massive deportations, no due process required.
Harmful foreign trade practices are an emergency requiring worldwide tariffs.
A national energy emergency requires more drilling and less oversight by the Environmental protection Agency.
The emergency of “the crushing cost of everyday living” requires deregulation of U.S. industries.
fake jobs
Jobs held by federal government workers. Additional useful terms for describing government workers: lazy, parasitic, wasteful, unaccountable.
GDP (gross domestic product)
Previously, GDP was calculated by adding up consumer spending, private investment, exports and government spending. Now, as concerns over recession grow, Trump’s Commerce secretary is manipulating data to provide a new way to measure productivity.
Gulf of America
Trump’s sudden change of terms for the body of water formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico for a time kept the Associated Press out of the White House, at least until a wacko leftist judge intervened. “This is about AP weaponizing language through their stylebook,” said the White House.
hoax
Pete Hegseth on July 4, 2021, in New York City. (Photo by James Devaney/GC Images)
Any unfavorable media coverage. Example: When The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would not have shared Houthi attack plans on the insecure Signal messaging flap, Hegseth called Goldberg “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of pedaling hoaxes time and time.” Term can be alternated with “witch hunt.”
Musk, Elon
He is not the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, according to more than 170 court filings from Trump’s Department of Justice.
names
Their meanings can be changed at will. In 2023, the Army’s Fort Bragg was renamed Fort Liberty so the base would no longer be named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg. In 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth renamed Fort Liberty, changing the name back to Fort Bragg. Hegseth said the second name change wasn’t about the Civil War, but about honoring a previously obscure World War II infantryman named Roland Bragg. Ditto Fort Benning. It’s no longer named after Confederate General Henry Benning, but World War I soldier Fred Benning.
Ponzi scheme
Social Security, as Trump adviser Elon Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan.
transparency
A term for sharing some information while withholding other information. Trump is “imposing radical transparency requirements on government departments and agencies in keeping with President Trump and the administration’s broader commitment to governmental transparency.”
truth
Whatever Trump and his Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt say it is. “I commit to telling the truth from this podium every single day,” said Leavitt during her first press conference. Leavitt told the press that USAID spent $50 million on condoms for Hamas members in Gaza. Trump later revealed the true truth: USAID spent $100 million on Gaza condoms, which were used like balloons to deliver bombs inside Israel.
truths
Anything Trump posts on his Truth Social platform.
Ukraine
The country that is led by a dictator and started a war with Russia in 2022.
The country to which the U.S. gave $350 billion in military aid. (You can ignore numerous reports saying the U.S. aid totaled a third of that amount.)
vaccines
Medications that kill more people than they help, according to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has blamed the polio vaccine for killing “many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.”
waste, fraud and abuse
Terms applied to any government program destined for cancellation. The goal is never to identify and weed out waste, fraud and abuse, thus improving the programs, but rather to use these charges to justify eliminating the programs.
Steve Rabey is a freelance writer based in Colorado Springs, Colo.
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