
What is Donald Trump’s most overused phrase? While he’s fond of “sad,” “beautiful,” “tariffs” and “thank you for attention to this matter,” there’s one sentence the president just keeps on repeating. As far back as 2017, websites were doing supercut reels on Trump’s reliance on the phrase, “Like you’ve never seen before.” Whether it be money, state dinners, or airports like you’ve never seen before, he is in a constant state of promising something unprecedented. Before being elected last year, Trump was stating that groceries had gone up “at levels that nobody’s ever seen before” and spoke about the “Kamala crime wave” that was “going on at levels that nobody has ever seen before.” This year, he’s stopped crime, boosted the military, and the economy like you’ve never seen before. A 2024 search by The Atlantic found Trump had already uttered the phrase “nobody has ever seen before” around 1000 times. He has already used some variation of “like you’ve never seen before” 194 times this year, according to Roll Call Factba.se, which tracks his statements. A new report by the Associated Press states the president’s default hyperbole is no accident. “For extreme responses, everything demands an extreme context,” Brian Ott, a communication professor at Missouri State University said. White House spokesperson Liz Huston told the Associated Press: “Repetition is the key to any good messaging and President Trump is the greatest communicator in the history of American politics.” Roll Call’s Bill Frischling explained the phrase seemed to be a verbal tic for Trump, used only when he is going off-script, as he shies away from it in his social media posts.