General Discussion

In recent days, President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to his illegal war on Iran – in which American troops are dying – as an “excursion,” a term generally reserved for describing pleasant little family sojourns or brief, fun vacations.

This is, according to sources in and close to the administration, because the president is confusing the term “military incursion” with a “military excursion,” a phrase typically used only to ridicule foreign adventurism and warmongering. Some of these sources say that they or their colleagues have used the term “incursion” in front of Trump lately, but then the president just… did his own thing.

“We took a little excursion because we felt we had to, to get rid of some evil, and I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion,” Trump said Tuesday, as he addressed Republican lawmakers at an event in Florida. Speaking at a business in Ohio on Wednesday, Trump said, “We did a little excursion, we had to take this couple weeks, few weeks of excursion.”

One way you can tell, even without asking any of Trump’s own appointees about it, that the president is botching this is that “military incursion” is a common term that a lot of people and media outlets have used to describe the president’s war in Iran. Furthermore, the Trump White House team definitely knows the term “incursion” because they use it in official documents to rant about immigrants.

Some of Trump’s aides are afraid to correct him, or think doing so would be a complete waste of time. They are almost certainly right.

“I’m not telling him,” one administration official tells Zeteo. Other Trump advisers and people close to this president say that it would be a fool’s errand to privately fact-check Trump here and doing so would likely get them yelled at.

“We say ‘incursion,’ the boss says ‘excursion.’ It’s not a big deal,” a second Trump official says.