Like You, President Trump Refers to Target as ‘Tarjay’


Luxury-obsessed President Trump let his true colors shine once again at Wednesday’s listening session with the Retail Industry Leaders Association. In a meeting at the White House to discuss the Republican plan for tax reform, Trump revealed that he pronounces Target as “Tarjay,” the pronunciation preferred by suburbanites pretending to be Parisian the world over.

The Urban Dictionary defines this usage as “Target Store said with a fake French accent to make it sound more upscale than it is. In reality it’s a half step better than Wally World [Walmart].” Maybe Trump learned the pronunciation from my elementary school BFF’s mom, who I assumed for far too long bought her bargain storage bins from some sort of luxury boutique.

Trump’s usage of a falsely aggrandizing term — especially where it concerns bargain home goods — couldn’t be more on brand. As the New York Times reported, in the Oval Office, Trump “will linger on the opulence of the newly hung golden drapes, which he told a recent visitor were once used by Franklin D. Roosevelt but in fact were patterned for Bill Clinton. For a man who sometimes has trouble concentrating on policy memos, Mr. Trump was delighted to page through a book that offered him 17 window covering options.” The experience sounds eerily familiar to anyone who’s ever shopped on the Target website.

The fake French pronunciation apparently dates back to 1962, when Target first opened stores in Duluth, Minn., although plenty of people assume that they were the ones to first coin the term. What are the chances that Trump is one of them?

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