"Let’s Go Taco" Has Everything to Do With Donald Trump and Nothing to Do With Tacos
"LET'S GOOOOOOO TACO!"
Published Sept. 15 2025, 4:30 p.m. ET
Have you been hearing people chant “Let’s go Taco” in videos while scrolling through your social feeds? Probably so. And you’ve likely pieced together that it has something to do with President Donald Trump, since many of the clips feature his face, whether real or AI-generated.
Aside from that, many of the videos don’t give much context beyond the fact that it involves the president and, well … tacos. Except it actually doesn’t. Not even close. The word “taco” in the chant is actually an acronym for a disrespectful phrase, and yes, it’s aimed directly at Trump. Here’s what it means.
What does "Let’s go taco" mean?
“Let’s go taco” is a chant that emerged from the acronym TACO, which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” The phrase started circulating online in May 2025, right when tariff talks between the U.S. and China were heating up.
It seems the term first appeared in the May 2, 2025, edition of Robert Armstrong’s Unhedged newsletter, where he described Trump coming in strong with bold tariff policies, only to pull back once the economic pressure got too heavy. That same month, Trump reduced tariffs on China from 145 percent to 30 percent, per the BBC, which gave TACO a stronger leg to stand on and helped it gain national attention.
At first, TACO was used mainly to poke at Trump’s tariff flip-flopping. But lately, it’s grown into more of a broad insult, almost a mantra, aimed at the Trump administration as a whole.
For example, in a TikTok shared by @grandbuddy0, a group of older protesters stood outside a Tesla store in Southlake, Texas, holding signs that read things like “Idiotic Defunding Destroys,” “Trump/MAGA is a Fascist Regime,” and “Americans Against Oligarchy.” Leading the crowd was a woman with a bullhorn, rallying them with chants of “Let’s go TACO.”
The chant has stuck around, but it spiked again in September 2025, likely tied to rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia. On Sept. 12, 2025, Trump told Fox News, per Yahoo! Finance, that his patience with Russia was “running out fast” and is threatening the country with sanctions if it doesn’t act soon, saying, “It’ll be hitting very hard on with sanctions to banks and having to do with oil and tariffs also.”
Perhaps the chant has been revived as many question Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and whether he will actually make good on his “threats” or just back down as he did with the tariffs on China.
Trump became very defensive when he first heard about TACO.
When a reporter asked him about it back in May 2025, he immediately got defensive, suggesting that he had pulled the strings in the tariff negotiations. He emphasized that countries like China agreed to meet with him right after he initially imposed the tariffs, implying they were eager to negotiate and bring the tariffs down after initially refusing.
He then fired back with, “You call that chickening out?” and went on to cite other examples of the progress the U.S. has made, signaling that he’s not just a talker, he gets things done.