As Trump grows ever more bizarre, it may be time to update the TACO meme. We offer the ultimate scorecard, and arrive at a proposal.
Here we are again, waiting on the edge of another ultimatum: standing beside a human-size Easter Bunny, Trump has threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age” if it does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. After over a month of war, we could be looking at a major escalation of the Iran war — or not.
Trump’s rage is understandable, since Iran’s blockade is illegal (it does not own the waterway), extremely damaging to the world economy (as we explored on yesterday’s Critical Conditions podcast), and has hijacked a war narrative that was meant to be about Iran’s nuclear program and perhaps regime change. But it’s also highly problematic in that it telegraphs the intention to commit a war crime and risks turning a war on the regime into a war against the country.
There is even more at stake than the war, With Trump threatening to pull out of NATO, alliance’s secretary-general is rushing to Washington tomorrow. Poor Mark Rutte; expect more lickspittle flattery in an effort to avoid Trump handing Putin the greatest gift received by a Russian since Yalta. After NATO and Iran, possibilities include an invasion of Cuba or a withdrawal from the UN.
In this moment of high-stakes anticipation, when so many are trying to predict what Trump will do, we’d like to take a moment for reflection. We do not mean to make light of a grave situation — but in light of Trump’s clear penchant for ultimatums, it’s time to consider the acronym that has emerged about this undeniably impactful president: TACO, meaning Trump Always Chickens Out.
For Trump critics, TACO is reassuring, suggesting their nemesis is all bark and no bite. For fans of his wrecking ball, it reflects a sort of disappointment that he does not go far enough. It any case it adds a bit of levity to a geopolitical landscape that is perhaps funny but not at all amusing. But is it true? What has been lacking is a true accounting. Let us correct that with the Ultimate Taco Scorecard (pointlessly capitalized, as Trump himself would favor).
Greenland
It began with a dramatic idea: that the United States needed Greenland. We know Trump loves to own things, and like Louis XIV he seems to think he is the state. I have a suspicion that Trump doesn’t know that the flattened map of the globe shows Greenland as way bigger than it really is because it is to far from the equator. He probably doesn’t know that all but a sliver of it is uninhabitable, probably considering its icy vastness an opportunity for real estate development. But sure, it has natural resources and access to the Arctic, which as the poles melt (because of the global warming which Trump denies) becomes more important as a strategic shipping lane. So for long weeks, through January, Trump appeared to be threatening to invade the territory, which is part of NATO ally Denmark. This prospect of war with the US completely freaked out the Europeans. But at the World Economic Forum in Davos, after making the threat again, Trump abruptly dropped it.
Verdict: Trump chickened out.
Venezuela
Last summer Venezuela had become a veritable. It’s true that the regime set up by Hugo Chavez in the 1990s was a criminal enterprise that had ruined the country’s freedom and prosperity, and that the deeply vile and comically mustachioed Nicolas Maduro was if anything doing his deceased boss one worse. It’s true that a quarter of the country’s former population had fled. But Trump seemed to vastly overestimate the degree to which Venezuela was responsible for illegal migration to the US as well as its standing as a source of narcotics, where it pales compared to neighboring Colombia, whose government Trump hates less. For weeks the administration was engaged in attacking Venezuelan boat and killing their crews extrajudicially, accusing them of “narco-terrorism.” He built up an Aramada just off Venezuela’s coast, around Trinidad, and threatened the regime. Then one morning in January he sent in special forces to kidnap Maduro and bring him (and his wife) to New York in handcuffs for a trial. Trump made no effort to save the country, instead engineering oil arrangements with Maduro’s more compliant successors.
Verdict: Trump did not chicken out.
Tariffs
Tariffs are perhaps Trump’s clearest case of sustained conviction. He has called them the most beautiful word in the dictionary, and has done this with a straight face suggesting a puzzling confusion about the concept of beauty. He loves tariffs as much as he appears, equally perplexingly, to hate windmills. Trump faced overwhelming expert consensus, sustained criticism even within the Republican party (which once favored free trade), and decades of accumulated understanding that tariffs are defensible only as a means of protecting specific industries deemed vital – not as “punishments” for other countries, or indeed all countries. Trump found himself at war with the dictionary itself as he insisted publicly that other countries paid the tariffs, which they do not (US importers do, passing the cost on to the consumer, generally). His appropriately timed April 2 “Liberation Day” global tariffs were repeatedly struck down by the courts, since Congress has the power to tariff, not the president, except in an emergency. Eventually even the Supreme Court, diverging from its now-standard posture as a MAGA rubber stamp, struck down his tariff policy. And still he persists, looking for new illegal ways to deploy tariffs, and lying about what they mean morning, noon and night.
Verdict: Trump did not chicken out.
World Trade Organization
Interestingly, though, he has not exactly withdrawn the United States from the World Trade Organization itself, despite repeatedly threatening to do so and certainly (as we have seen above) eviscerating global trade. Instead, Trump has used the threat of exit as leverage, arguing the organization is biased against U.S. interests and pushing for structural reforms. At the same time, the administration has taken steps to weaken the institution from within. It has paused financial contributions and, more significantly, continued blocking appointments to the WTO’s appellate body, effectively paralyzing its dispute resolution system. Analysts from institutions like the Peterson Institute for International Economics note that while a full withdrawal remains possible, current policy reflects a strategy of pressure and disruption rather than outright exit.
Verdict: Trump partially chickened out.
USAID
Before 2025, the United States Agency for International Development was a cornerstone of global humanitarian assistance, managing up to $50 billion annually across health, food aid, and development programs. It funded HIV treatment, malaria prevention, famine relief, and basic infrastructure in dozens of countries, reaching tens of millions of people. But Trump thinks handing out assistance is for suckers, and seems unaware of the soft power this bought for America. In March 2025, Marco Rubio announced that, following a Trump administration review, approximately 83% of USAID contracts — over 5,000 programs —would be canceled, with remaining functions folded into the State Department. The move marked an unprecedented rollback of U. foreign aid capacity. According to researchers cited by Harvard, the sudden disruption of these programs has already contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths, with projections warning of far higher tolls due to loss of access to food, vaccines, and lifesaving treatments worldwide.
Verdict: Trump did not chicken out.
Gaza War
This is an interesting case. Trump started off by imposing a temporary cease-fire on Netanyahu a week before his term even began. But less than a month into his term he seemed to give Netanyahu a greed light to restart the war, even declaring, in one of the most jarring surprises in recent diplomatic history, that the Gazan population was leave the area and that the United States would “own” and “run” it. The bemused Israeli leader restarted the war, thus preserving his ultranationalist coalition and costing more lives, and by the fall had still failed to dislodged Hamas, whereupon Trump imposed on him another cease-fire. This deal led to the return of all remaining Israeli hostages, and Trump claimed Hamas had agreed to disarm. Hamas, however, remains armed. Trump has claimed repeatedly that Hamas will face “hell” if it doesn’t disarm. Over a half year has gone by and Hamas is still there, as is the population of Gaza.
Verdict: Trump basically chickened out.
FEMA and the Department of Education
In something that seems straight out of the pages of The Onion, Trump wants to shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency and US Dept. of Education. We lump these together because they share a similar absurdity factor, straight out of cartoon villainy, and also a similar verdict. At the Dept. of Education, functions were reassigned, staffing was cut, and the structure of the department was fundamentally altered. While formal abolition was not possible without Congress, the practical result was a significant dismantling of its role. This idea was not exactly abandoned, but was implemented as far as the system allowed. With FEMA, which Trump thinks has become too large, inefficient, and costly. the administration tion has not formally abolished it, which again would require extremely unpopular congressional action, but it has taken significant steps to weaken and restructure it. Budget proposals have included substantial cuts to FEMA funding, alongside plans to reduce staffing levels and scale back preparedness and mitigation programs. Some grants and long-term resilience initiatives have been targeted for elimination, while operational disruptions—such as delays in aid distribution and administrative slowdowns—have affected the agency’s effectiveness.
Verdict: Trump only partially chickened out.
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is the United Nations’ central body for coordinating global health, tracking disease outbreaks, and guiding international responses to crises. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it played a critical role in sharing data, issuing public health guidance, coordinating vaccine efforts, and supporting weaker health systems—making it a key hub for global cooperation at a moment when coordination was essential. Trump hates it, though, arguing it was overly deferential to China and lacked transparency. Withdrawal became a core political objective, framed as part of a broader “America First” approach to international institutions. On January 20, 2025 — his first day back in office — he signed an executive order initiating the process. Because US law requires a one-year notice period, the withdrawal was completed on January 22, 2026, ending US funding, participation, and governance roles. The implications are significant: the US loses direct influence over global health policy and early-warning systems, while the WHO loses its largest funder. Critics warn this weakens pandemic preparedness and global coordination, while supporters argue it restores sovereignty and redirects resources to domestic and bilateral efforts. It’sa safe to say no US other US leader would have ever contemplated such a move.
Verdict: Trump did not chicken out.
And so we arrive at the conclusion. The original meme — TACO — offers comfort in its simplicity, but the reality is more uneven, more selective, more situational. Much as one might wish for him to “always” chicken out of his generally catastrophic plans, the scorecard reveals quite plainly that he does not. Our proposal, therefore, is for a reformulation that is more accurate and also, oddly, fairer to the president: Trump, Essentially, Sometimes Chickens Out.
TESCO, that is. As an Anglophile and former resident of the United Kingdom, it also pleases me to offer a nod to one of the realm’s iconic supermarket brands.
This offers little succor, I realize, to those who are concerned about the Iran war becoming an interminable quagmire, or his most recent threat of genocide against the Iranian “civilization,” or indeed to those concerned that he might follow through on musings about withdrawing from NATO or the UN. But at AQL, our policy is to stick to the facts, however ridiculous they may be.
