Donald Trump is said be a brilliantly caustic nicknamer, but if he was good at this in the past, he's been off his game lately. ("Sleepy Joe"Biden? "SleepyCreepy Joe"? Will it be "SleepyCreepyWeepyPeepyLeapy Joe" next?)

Give Trump a little credit, though -- this is a new direction for him:

President Donald Trump dismissed Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Friday in a single sentence.

“Alfred E. Neuman cannot become president of the United States,” the president told POLITICO in a 15-minute telephone interview, when asked what he thought of the South Bend, Ind., mayor. Neuman’s freckled, gap-toothed face and oversized ears have for decades graced the cover of the humor magazine Mad.

Buttigieg trolled Trump back, subtly:

"I’ll be honest. I had to Google that," he said. "I guess it’s just a generational thing. I didn’t get the reference. It's kind of funny, I guess. But he’s also the president of the United States and I’m surprised he’s not spending more time trying to salvage this China deal."

Did Trump come up with this nickname himself? As I say, he's not very sharp these days. I think it was fed to him by a fellow senior citizen. (Giuliani?)

But here's the problem for Trump: If he wants to use the nickname again, especially in one of his campaign rallies, he'll have to remember it. It's Alfred E. Neuman. That's three elements. For Trump, that's a lot of memorization.

It's easy for me to imagine Trump saying to a crowd, "And then there's Mayor Pete -- or as I call him, Andrew F. Neuman."

Or he'll do that thing he does when he can't remember someone's surname:

So maybe he'll say, "Mayor Pete -- the guy I call Alfred E. Mad."

There are so many ways he could mangle this:

No wonder they told him to test it out in a telephone interview. They knew he might flub it if he weren't reading it off a note card. He won't be so lucky if he tries it in front of a crowd.

Republished with permission from No More Mister Nice Blog