Clinton is selling them down the tubes

During an interview with Anderson Cooper this week, Donald Trump responded to a question from Anderson on why he called Hillary Clinton a bigot.  Referring to African Americans, Trump said that Clinton is “selling them down the tubes.”  This is a mash up of “selling them down the river” (harming or disappointing people who trusted you) and “going down the tubes” (to become much worse).  “Down” is the culprit here, as it appears in both idioms.  Also, I suspect the image of tubing down the river might have floated in Donald’s mind.

For the first time, I received a malaphor spotting from two people, both who are loyal malaphor watchers and followers, Mike Kovacs and Sally Adler.   A yuuuge thanks to Mike and Sally for hearing this timely mixed idiom and sending it in!

If you liked this one from the political world, I have a whole chapter of malaphors uttered by politicians in my new book, “He Smokes Like a Fish and other Malaphors”, available on Amazon now!!

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That’s the crème de le résistance

At CNN’s Democrat Town Hall last February, Anderson Cooper asked Hillary Clinton about her relationship with her grandchild, and she replied with this wonderful malaphor.  This is a congruent conflation of “crème de la crème” and “pièce de rèsistance”, both meaning the very best or most important.  This mash up was retweeted a lot, and some of the more clever ones were:

“Creme de resistance” is halfway between a latte macchiato and a flat white – Jon Lovett

The Creme de Resistance was DeGaulle’s favorite baked good – Ronald Seyb

I think we just found Hillary’s @benandjerrys flavor: “Creme de Resistance” – Caroline Haubold

For more on this, you can check this link:  http://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2016/02/03/hillary-clintons-grandchild-is-the-creme-de-le-resistance/

A big merci to Steve Grieme for hearing this one and passing it on.

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