--- title: Donald Trump Changed the Meaning of Gaffes description: Donald Trump has undermined our understanding of how gaffes work in 2016, revealing some deeper truths about how American politics work canonical: https://time.com/4534885/donald-trump-gaffes/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-10-18T22:03:48.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-07T06:51:07.369Z article:section: Politics og:title: How Donald Trump Changed the Meaning of Gaffes og:description: Trump has changed the game of gaffes og:url: https://time.com/4534885/donald-trump-gaffes/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltee7b04c247b617cf/6988aa88196cf4505903d9bc/nixon-facebook.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1609 og:image:height: 905 og:image:alt: nixon-facebook og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Donald Trump Changed the Meaning of Gaffes twitter:description: Trump has changed the game of gaffes twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltee7b04c247b617cf/6988aa88196cf4505903d9bc/nixon-facebook.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Donald Trump Changed the Meaning of Gaffes > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=0f59c54b-a390-48b5-9406-18783a1285e1&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Political Backfires [Watch (HLS stream): Political Backfires](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/lxbf9xFl.m3u8) (1:46)  _Published 2016-10-18. In politics, image is everything, so it's bad when a photograph makes a candidate look bad. It's worse when a candidate's own team caused it to happen, it's called the "Dukakis in a tank" moment._ by [Ryan Teague Beckwith](https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/) ## Ryan Teague Beckwith Oct 18, 2016 10:03 PM UTC In politics, image is everything, so it's bad when a photograph makes a candidate look bad. It's worse when a candidate's own team caused it to happen, it's called the "Dukakis in a tank" moment. by [Ryan Teague Beckwith](https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/) ## Ryan Teague Beckwith Oct 18, 2016 10:03 PM UTC Hillary Clinton was arguing that it was “awfully good” that someone with Donald Trump’s temperament wasn’t in charge of the country’s laws. Trump, standing nearby at the second debate, burst in. “Because you’d be in jail,” he said, earning cheers from the audience. The next day, Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, [went on “Morning Joe”](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-jail-clinton-quip-229531) to explain it away. “That was a quip,” she said. His running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, later [told NBC News](https://twitter.com/VaughnHillyard/status/786217245391196160) that the line was taken “out of context,” echoing the argument that it was just a joke. It was a classic play in the game of gaffes: Claim the candidate was misunderstood and blame the media. But in this case, the candidate didn’t want to play along. His social media team ran dead-serious ads on Facebook with the phrase. Later that week, he responded to chanting supporters with a [“Lock her up is right,”](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/10/11/trump%5Fsavors%5Flock%5Fher%5Fup%5Fchants%5Fat%5Fpa%5Frallies.html) said at a rally that Clinton [“has to go to jail”](http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-podesta-emails/) over her private email server and tweeted that she [“should be in jail”](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/787267564405653505) already. It was just the latest example of how Trump has undermined our understanding of how gaffes work in 2016, accidentally revealing some deeper truths about how American politics really work. Again and again, he’s turned remarks that would have been considered gaffes by any other candidate and turned them into a central part of his campaign message. At its simplest level, a gaffe can be defined as a time when a candidate says something off-script that appears to undermine their campaign message. It could be [a simple misstatement](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-tells-crowd-election-day-is-november-28/), like when Trump told supporters to vote on November 28, a full 20 days too late. Or [a more serious factual error](http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/07/gaffe-track-the-victim-or-the-crimea/493757/), like when he said Vladimir Putin would not go into Ukraine, even though he already has. Or [an inartfully worded statement](http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/donald-trump-father-loan-1-million-dollars-215154) that rivals can easily attack, like when Trump said his father gave him a “small loan of a million dollars.” In an age of tightly scripted campaigns, the gaffe is supposed to be unintentionally revealing, a window into what the candidate really knows and thinks. Political reporters covered gaffes the way umpires call foul balls: The campaign was supposed to be hitting over there, and instead it hit over here. But over time, the concept of the gaffe grew to encompass a broader set of missteps. If a candidate [said something offensive to a group of voters](http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/kasich-women-left-their-kitchens-me-when-i-first-ran-n523636)–like when Ohio Gov. John Kasich said that women “left their kitchens” to support his first campaign—it was covered as a gaffe. Or if they violated some long-held norm, like when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney [trash-talked the London Olympics](http://theweek.com/articles/473545/mitt-romney-disses-london-olympics-campaign-disaster) while on a visit there in 2012, it was handled as a gaffe by both campaigns and the reporters covering them—an approach that was validated when the candidates inevitably apologized or tried to clarify their remarks. In some cases, Trump followed that formula, walking his remarks back—a key tell that something was a gaffe. He [tweeted that he was wrong](http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-trump-walks-back-his-claim-that-he-saw-1470406189-htmlstory.html) about seeing a plane carrying ransom money to Iran on TV. He [argued that he was being sarcastic](http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/12/politics/donald-trump-obama-clinton-isis-founder-sarcasm/) when he said President Obama founded ISIS and [called for Russian hackers](http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/28/politics/donald-trump-russia-hacking-sarcastic/) to unearth Clinton’s emails. He [claimed that he was only talking about additional guards](http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-20/trump-walks-back-remarks-on-guns-at-orlando-club-after-nra-disagrees) when he said people at an Orlando club should have been armed and that [he was referring to future moves in Ukraine](http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/289965-trump-tries-to-walk-back-ukraine-claim) by Putin. His campaign put out a statement that he believed abortion doctors—and not women—are the [ones who should be punished](http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-lewandowski-they-re-destroying-very-good-person-n548036). But in other cases, he refused to back down from remarks that would have been considered gaffes if they came from any other candidate. Instead, he turned them into central parts of his message, and got even more attention as a result. During the course of his campaign, Trump attacked prisoners of war ([“I like people who weren’t captured.”](http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trump-attacks-mccain-i-like-people-who-werent-captured-120317)), Pope Francis ([“I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President.”](https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-response-to-the-pope)), a rival’s spouse ([“Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!”](http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/22/politics/ted-cruz-melania-trump-twitter-donald-trump-heidi/)), a rival’s father ([“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot.”](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/us/politics/donald-trump-ted-cruz-convention.html?referer=https:/t.co/14AQIadOtN)), a reporter with a disability ([“You ought to see this guy, ‘Ah I don’t know what I said!'”](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-mocks-reporters-disability/)), a federal judge ([“The judge … happens to be, we believe, Mexican.”](http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2016/06/11/what-trump-has-said-judge-curiel/85641242/)) and a Gold Star mother ([“Maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say.”](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/us/politics/donald-trump-khizr-khan-wife-ghazala.html)), among others. Most traditional candidates would have eventually disavowed the remarks, tried to spin them or argued that they were misunderstood. But by doubling down, Trump exposed that these particular remarks weren’t really gaffes, even though they were often covered that way at the time. The gaffe, after all, is not on message. While these remarks weren’t often scripted, they were in line with his campaign’s main arguments that America has grown weak and too obsessed with being politically correct and that his political opponents are either feckless or undermining America. Like every other politician in the 2016 cycle, Trump has made his fair share of gaffes. But his most well-known and outlandish remarks this year weren’t off-script. They were the script. ## Transcript In politics, image is everything. So it's bad when a photograph makes a candidate look bad. But it's even worse when the candidate own team causes it to happen. It's called the Dukakis in a tank moment, the name comes from presidential candidate Michael Dukakis who agreed to ride around a tank during a meeting with a defense company Contractor. The resulting footage looked so bad that the George H. W. Bush campaign turned it into a negative ad. Bush's son's campaign ran a similar ad with footage of John Kerry windsurfing. Though the footage itself wasn't damaging, the ad used the imagery to argue that Kerry was a flip- flopper who attacks with the political wind. Kerry took a different hit when he was photographed wearing a so called bunny suit while checking out a space shuttle. A different campaign maxim, stay away from any type of head gear, a rule Calvin Coolidge broke while meeting with the Sioux tribe in 1927. Richard Nixon also had trouble with this one. Candidates should also take care not to dress too formally as Nixon did in this awkward photograph of him strolling the beach in a suit. Nor do all political backfires start out that way. George W Bush's mission accomplished banner turned into an ever bigger gaffe as the war in Iraq dragged on. And a photo of Hillary Clinton checking her phone was celebrated at first But later took on a different meaning in light of her email scandal. Should gaffs should have been easily avoided. Someone should have told Gerald Ford that you remove the corn shuck wrapper from its [ UNKNOWN ] before eating it. Or Lyndon Johnson not to lift his beagle by the ears. Or John McCain not go get into a golf cart with former President Bush. Or George HW Bush not get too excited about a high tech cash register. [ MUSIC ] But maybe it wouldn't have mattered. When image is everything, there's only so much a candidate can do. 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