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Trump’s insult of Meghan Markle is right out of his tired playbook

The insult-comic-in-chief has a very small repertoire of insults.

President Donald Trump is greeted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on June 3, 2019 in London, England, days after he insulted her grandson's wife.
President Donald Trump is greeted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on June 3, 2019 in London, England, days after he insulted her grandson's wife. (Photo credit: Victoria Jones - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

After calling the Duchess of Sussex “nasty” days before his first state visit to the United Kingdom, President Donald Trump lied on Sunday by claiming he never used the word, a denial that was quickly and easily refuted by an audio recording.

Not only did he call Meghan Markle “nasty,” he has used the same insult before and since to attack dozens of other rivals — and even a popular lingerie company.

Mere hours after denying he used the word, Trump attacked the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, calling him “nasty,” with the word in quotes.

Trump most famously used the insult to dismiss his 2016 presidential election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, in their final debate. After she joked about his record of tax avoidance, he interrupted her to say, “such a nasty woman.”

But he has hardly reserved the term for Democrats. Indeed, since he joined Twitter in March 2009, he has used the line at least 17 other times to dismiss those he disagreed with.

1. The Media

2. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

3. Special counsel Robert Mueller

4. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

5. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz

6. CNN’s David Gregory

7. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

8. The Club for Growth

9. His own handpicked director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison, Omarosa Manigault Newman

10. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

11. The late conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer

12. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

13. Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL)

14. Former Jeb Bush staffer Lauren Batchelder

15. The Southern Baptist Convention’s Russell Moore

16. Spy Magazine and Charlie Hebdo

17. Victoria’s Secret

Depending on his mood, it is not always entirely clear whether Trump thinks being “nasty” is a bad thing or a good thing. In September 2017, he claimed that he had “made more progress in the last nine months against ISIS than the Obama administration has made in 8 years,” because he had been “proactive & nasty.”

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But it is clear that his claim that he never used the term to describe Queen Elizabeth II’s granddaughter-in-law is one of his more than 10,000 presidential lies.