Trump’s Meltdown Over ‘TACO’ Trade Spurs Wave of Chicken Memes

President Donald Trump seemingly had a meltdown during a press briefing at the White House on Wednesday after a “nasty” reporter asked whether he was familiar with Wall Street analysts’ new term, “TACO trade,” an acronym suggesting “Trump always chickens out” under tariff threats.

“Oh, isn’t that nice,” Trump stated in a clip circulating on X. “I chicken out. I’ve never heard that.”

“You mean because I reduced China from 145% that I said down to 100, and then down to another number. I said you have to open up your whole country,” Trump continued. “And because I gave the European Union a 50% tax tariff, and they called up and they said ‘please, let’s meet right now. Please let’s meet right now,'” Trump continued.

He added that EU leaders were initially unwilling to meet until he enacted his 50% tariff, which he delayed until July 9.

“You call that chickening out?” Trump sarcastically prompted. “Because we have $14 trillion now invested, committed to investing, when Biden didn’t have practically anything,” the president continued, claiming the U.S. was dying and is now “the hottest country” in the world.

“Six months ago, this country was stone cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country—people didn’t think it was going to survive, and you ask a nasty question like that,” Trump continued. “It’s called negotiation,” he added, before claiming he intentionally set China’s initial tariff at 145% to “go down a little bit.”

“[China was] doing no business whatsoever, and they were having a lot of problems,” Trump declared. He added that U.S. officials were “very nice to China,” claiming his tariffs tremendously helped the nation “because we were basically going cold turkey with China.”

“We were doing no business because of the tariff, because it was so high,” Trump continued. “But I knew that. But don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question. To me, that’s the nastiest question,” he added before calling on another reporter.

Trump’s viral meltdown quickly spurred a wave of chicken memes on social media.

“Don’t ever say what?” an X user joked with an AI-generated photo of a chicken’s head on Trump’s body.

“Donald: ‘Don’t ever say what you said.’ The rest of the world: Trump Always Chickens Out TACO,” another added, with another AI photo of the president in a chicken suit with tacos in front of him.

“Was this foreshadowing from @nbcsnl years ago? #TACO,” a third X user joked in a post accompanied by a screenshot from Trump’s 2004 appearance on the late-night sketch comedy show.