Beautiful, according to Merriam-Webster: [byü-ti-fəl] 1. having qualities of beauty: exciting aesthetic pleasure. 2. generally pleasing.
Beautiful, according to a man named Donald John Trump: A word that can replace pretty much any positive adjective and be used to describe manufacturing firms, auto workers, and coal.
Which explains why, during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, he uttered the word "beautiful" at least three times.
According to NPR's transcript (and our ears), there was, "Staub Manufacturing, a small, beautiful business in Ohio," which is apparently hiring 14 people and "expanding into the building next door" thanks to tax reform.
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We have "ended the war on beautiful, clean coal," Trump said later in the speech. He has used the phrase "beautiful, clean coal" previously during his rallies. "Clean coal" is a problematic term, widely believed to have been popularised by groups that support the coal industry.
Finally, he mentioned "America's great, beautiful auto workers," referring to manufacturers in Detroit for whom he halted government mandates "so that we can get Motor City revving its engines again."
The "beautifuls" were missing from an earlier transcript. In our observation, he ad-libbed quite a few adjectives and asides but otherwise stuck to the teleprompter.
Trump's penchant for repetition has been well-documented. “Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he’d repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes,” Michael Wolff writes in his tell-all book Fire and Fury.
The speech — one of the longest in presidential history — was written with help from National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, staff secretary Rob Porter, economics advisor Gary Cohn, senior policy advisor Stephen Miller, and speechwriters Ross Worthington and Vince Haley.
Now his near-constant use of the word "totally"? That's a whole other story.