Spicy AI-generated TACO memes are taking over social media because ‘Trump always chickens out’

One easy way to ensure an unflattering nickname has staying power is to act defensive about it. Apparently, the same goes for unflattering acronyms.

After multiple news outlets reported on Wednesday morning that Wall Street has embraced a new acronym for approaching the topic of tariffs—TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out—a reporter asked the president about it during an afternoon press conference.

Trump responded apoplectically, scolding the reporter for her “nasty” question, and admonishing her, “Don’t ever say what you said.”

So, naturally, within minutes, the internet was awash with AI-generated images and other memes linking Trump with tacos.

It all started on May 2, when Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined the phrase in the publication’s Unhedged newsletter.

“Regular readers will not be surprised by Unhedged’s view that the recent rally has a lot to do with markets realizing that the US administration does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure, and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain,” Armstrong wrote, as stocks began recovering just over a month after the U.S.’s ostensible Liberation Day. “This is the Taco theory: Trump Always Chickens Out.”

Even someone with only a cursory understanding of international trade would have probably noticed the pattern by this past weekend, when Trump backtracked on a recently announced 50% tariff threat against the EU.

The Streisand effect, wdith a dash of hot sauce

Giving this pattern a name so easy to remember, and so devastatingly diminishing, may have predetermined its ubiquity. Although the term had apparently flourished on Wall Street in the weeks since it was first coined, it only broke containment when it was finally written about enough that Trump had to actually respond to it.

Now that he’s done so, and revealed in the process that the phrase has apparently hit a nerve, it’s social media’s turn to respond.

“Taco Don” memes are flourishing on X, mostly in the form of AI-generated images. Some of them depict Trump utterly ensconced in tacos or taco-related items.

Others still manage to depict Trump as both taco and chicken.

Anyone abandoning the AI route and instead searching manually for chicken-adjacent images involving Trump will strike gold in at least one spot.

When Trump hosted Saturday Night Live in 2004, he performed in a sketch called “Donald Trump’s House of Wings,” during which the cast dances around him in chicken costumes—something that has not escaped notice on X.

Another image from Trump’s past has come back to haunt him even more, though, since the TACO acronym emerged.

In 2016, then-candidate Trump celebrated Cinco de Mayo by tweeting an image of himself grinning over a Trump Tower Grill taco bowl, fork in hand. That image is now making the rounds again on X and Bluesky in its new context. Even sitting U.S. Senator Tina Smith posted the image on her Bluesky account.

What happens from here might feel familiar. When the internet exploded with weird JD Vance memes earlier this year, fans of the vice president attempted to reclaim the narrative by tweeting similar memes to support Vance. Indeed, at least one X user is already trying to repurpose the new TACO acronym to mean “Trump Always Crushes Opposition.”

Whether that version of the phrase will actually gain any traction remains to be seen. In the meantime, meme-lovers, Trump critics, and those who enjoy looking at tacos are eating well.