Last fall, after America learned about a videotape featuring the Republican presidential candidate bragging about groping women, Michelle Obama delivered a fiery speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, seemingly condemning his behavior. “This wasn’t just locker-room banter,” Obama said from behind a podium while campaigning for Hillary Clinton and her running mate Tim Kaine. “This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior ... And to make matters worse, it now seems very clear that this isn’t an isolated incident. It’s one of countless examples of how he has treated women his whole life.”
The pointed takedown became one of the most memorable moments in a memorable election cycle. But of the 3,309 words the First Lady spoke, “Donald” and “Trump” were not among them. Trump’s name was also notably missing from many of her husband’s speeches on the campaign trail for Clinton. When the late Gwen Ifill asked President Barack Obama why he had been avoiding saying “Trump,” he replied, “He seems to do a good job mentioning his own name. So, I figure, you know, I will let him do his advertising for him[self].”
Like the Obamas, many of Trump’s critics have become rather skilled at speaking about him without ever saying his name. In his January State of the State address, California Governor Jerry Brown didn’t utter “Trump” once, even though the politician had been vocal and explicit about his opposition in the past. Nor was the name said by Representative John Lewis when the civil-rights leader responded to attacks Trump lobbed at him via Twitter. Meryl Streep’s viral Golden Globes speech took aim at the new president while never acknowledging him by name, and “a coarse blowhard who has boasted about assaulting women” was the closest the humorist Calvin Trillin came to naming the man in a recent piece in The New Yorker. Last week, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter Bernice King shared a widely circulated list to her Facebook page offering tips for resisting Trump. The top suggestion: “Use his name sparingly so as not to detract from the issues.”