We spent, as of three months ago, $7 trillion — not billion, not million — seven trillion-with-a-T. Nobody ever heard of the word a ‘trillion’ 10 years ago. We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East.”To a lay person, the claim that no one had heard of the word “trillion” a decade ago may seem valid. Some people say “millions of millions of millions,” he writes — but then there are some who use the word “trillion.” This isn’t the same trillion that we use now; a trillion as we use it now is a million million, not a million million million. If we assume that Trump was not actually suggesting that the word “trillion” was new as of a decade ago, we can instead consider it metaphorically. No one had heard the word “trillion” a decade ago, he may be arguing, in the sense that, back then, spending trillions of dollars was a rarity.

Source: Washington Post March 29, 2018 20:26 UTC