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Donald Trump Criticizes Conservatives Saying 'Woke' All The Time
By Aila Slisco


Former President Donald Trump is apparently distancing himself from the conservative trend of extensively using the word "woke."

Trump suggested that the term was overused by Republicans during a 2024 presidential campaign stop in Iowa on Thursday, complaining that "half the people" who use the term do not even know what it means.

"Woke" has become a culture war buzzword among the political right in
recent years. While definitions vary, it is often used as a catchall term
to describe political positions or issues of which conservatives do not approve.

Notably, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—Trump's bitter rival in the 2024 GOP presidential primary race—has extensively used the term "woke," introducing
the "Stop Woke Act" in his state last year and campaigning on an "anti-
woke" platform.
Donald Trump Criticizes Conservatives Saying 'Woke'
Former President Donald Trump stands on stage at a "Save America" rally on
July 22, 2022, in Prescott Valley, Arizona. From the campaign stump in Iowa
on Thursday, Trump assailed the conservative trend of extensively...
Mario Tama/Getty

"I don't like the term 'woke,'" Trump said during his speech at the
Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, a suburb of Des Moines. "I hear
the term 'woke, woke, woke.' It's just a term they use. Half the people
can't even define it, they don't know what it is."
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Trump went on to suggest that his own definition of "woke" involved
transgender athletes, or a hypothetical scenario of men pretending to be transgender women to compete in women's sports.

The former president said that he would have "the greatest" women's
basketball team if he could convince NBA star LeBron James and "four or
five other big guys" to "become a woman."

"I'll go down as the greatest coach in history," said Trump. "They'll say I
was the greatest ever ... and that's all 'woke.' That's all ... I guess
they define that as woke, but that's all woke."

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the term "woke" as being "aware of
and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)."

"It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement," Merriam- Webster's website states.

"By the end of that same decade it was also being applied by some as a
general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left- leaning," it continues.

Ryan Newman, general counsel for DeSantis, defined "woke" as "the belief
there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address
them" during a court hearing last year, according to Florida Politics.
Read more


DeSantis, whom Trump often refers to with derogatory nicknames like "Ron DeSanctimonious" or "Meatball Ron," has not explicitly defined "woke"
himself, despite using the term extensively.

During his second inaugural address in January, the governor told
supporters that he rejected "woke ideology" and proclaimed that "Florida is where woke goes to die."

Two Axios Engagious/Schlesinger focus groups conducted in January suggested that Florida residents had significant difficulty in defining what "woke" means.

Regardless of Trump's apparent rejection of the term on Thursday, the
former president has recently and repeatedly used "woke" to attack his political opponents.

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