The Atlantic

The Karen in Chief

President Trump calls the cops on those who challenge him, even if there’s no actual violation, to make life miserable for them.
Source: MANDEL NGAN / AFP / Getty

The United States feels like a nation of Karens these days, so it’s only appropriate that the president would be the Karen in chief.

A Karen, if you’ve somehow missed the memo, is the type of person who demands to see the manager or calls the cops, like the dog owner who summoned the NYPD to Central Park after an African American man asked her to leash her dog. As my colleague Kaitlyn Tiffany writes, “They’re obsessed with banal consumer trends and their personal appearance, and typically criminally misguided, usually loudly and with extreme confidence.”

The term is most commonly applied to middle-aged women—but why abide by that sexist standard? A man can easily be a Karen, as Donald Trump is proving this week.

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