When President Trump Tweets, He Rarely Gets Off Scot-Free

Among President Trump’s tweets this week were the following:

“Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time.” You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term? He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself, and get…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018

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….his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free. He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018

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When President Trump tweets, there is usually a good deal of reaction, both pro and con, soon after. And heaven forbid that he makes a typo or a misspelling, the reaction will be cutting and swift. (I guess that’s one good thing about not having too many followers of this blog; grammarians would have a field day.)

Well, in this case, the President had the misfortune of using the phrase “Scott Free” when it should be “scot-free”, and Twitter users couldn’t wait to ridicule the guy. Now I’m the last person to defend President Trump, but it must be hard to be in a job where nearly everything you say and do is analyzed by people waiting for you to make a mistake, and when you do, they can’t wait to tell the world.

But my sense is that President Trump enjoys getting a reaction when he posts to Twitter, and perhaps this situation was no different.

It must be cool though to have such an engaged readership, to the point where Merriam Webster experienced a 3,100% increase in people looking up what the term “scot-free” means soon after the President’s tweets.

As it turns out, back in the 1500s, “scot” was a British word for taxes, so the term “scot-free” meant being free from taxes. Today, the phrase means to get away with something without being punished.

I think everyone knew that’s what President Trump meant; he certainly wasn’t referring to a person named Scott Free, as some have suggested. But sometimes he just sets himself up for this kind of backlash in his rush to tweet.

And while President Trump used the phrase when referring to someone else (Michael Cohen), I am sure there are many people who have used the phrase in reference to the President himself…

Finally, like any good student, to show that I’ve mastered the meaning of the word “scot-free”, I’ll use it in a sentence:

I wonder if I’ll get off scot-free for not giving credit to where the “Get Out of Jail, Free” image at the top of this post is from…