Looks like the “Birdbrain” debacle has Donald Trump changing tactics already

Even as Donald Trump was winning the New Hampshire Republican primary but underperforming against Nikki Haley, Trump kept obsessively referring to her as “Birdbrain.” I pointed out why this nickname was ineffective on two levels.

First, it failed to follow the strategy of Trump’s previous nicknames for opponents such as “Crooked Hillary” and “Little Marco” which included the person’s first name in the hope of evoking the nickname in the public’s mind whenever they heard the candidate’s name. Second, by not including Nikki Haley’s name in the nickname, it made it look like an increasingly senile Trump couldn’t remember her name. This was, after all, right after Trump confused Nikki Haley four times in a row for Nancy Pelosi.

I wasn’t the only one who pointed out that “Birdbrain” was particularly ineffective, and in fact it began trending as everyone piled on. Now it looks like Trump (or whoever is running his social media posts) is catching on. Trump’s latest social media posts have begun referring to Nikki Haley as “Nimbra.”

It’s difficult to tell if this is an attempt at being racist (Haley’s real first real name is Nimarata), or if it’s some kind of obscure reference that no one understands (Google doesn’t turn up anything useful for “Nimbra”) or if Trump is so senile that he really does think her name is Nimbra. Just days ago Trump thought she was Nancy, so anything’s possible.

In any case, “Nimbra” still feels like a pretty stupid and ineffective nickname. All along it’s felt like the obvious insulting twist on Nikki Haley’s name “Nimarata” was “Nimrod.” I don’t use it because it feels racist to mock Haley’s ethnic first name, but such a thing would never stop Trump. If you Google “Nimrod Haley” you see just how many people on the internet have been using that term to insult her for years. And yet the best that Trump could come up with is “Nimbra” instead of Nimrod? Is there anything left of his brain at all?