Inside Trump's new weird obsession with the number 22

[dalton99a]

https://www.alternet.org/trump-22/

Inside Trump's new weird obsession with the number 22
Matthew Rozsa
June 21, 2026 | 09:33AM ET

President Donald Trump seems to be obsessed with the number 22 — and no one really knows why.

“Donald Trump may be the 80-year-old who is both the 45th and 47th president of the United States, but lately, his favorite number seems to be 22,” reported NBC News' Monica Alba and Caroline Kenny on Sunday. This includes falsely claiming that Washington DC has 22 fountains (it has 18), that he had proved wrong 22 Nobel Prize-winning economists and that the military recently destroyed 22 ships in Iran. He has also discussed a swimming pool he built 22 years ago, described meeting with 22 medical specialists and complained that a possible trip to Asia would take 22 hours.

“In June, we obliterated Iran’s nuclear capacity in Operation Midnight Hammer, you saw that. People have been waiting for 22 years to do that,” Trump said in January to a crowd in Iowa.

In March, describing another Iranian mission, he said that “they call ’em mine droppers, and the mine droppers, 22, all 22, are gone.”

Similarly, at a Hanukkah reception, Trump said that “we were practicing this, this. And the predecessors we were practicing for 22 years, they said, for 22 years they were practicing. And no president had the courage to let them go and do that. They wanted to do it for 22 years, and the predecessors being the young pilots at the time, but for 22 years, three times a year, they were practicing that run.”

...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fucking weirdo

[Lithos]

1. Perserevation

Why numbers in particular?
• Numbers are relatively over-learned, compact symbols that can stay accessible even as language and memory degrade, so they may be easier to “grab” than a full sentence
• Once a specific number becomes the habitual answer, impaired executive control (frontal lobe dysfunction) makes it hard to inhibit that response and generate a new one.
• This kind of compulsive or repetitive responding is especially associated with frontotemporal and frontal-involving dementias, where inhibition and cognitive flexibility are hit early.

The key point: the number itself rarely has deep hidden meaning; it’s more a symptom of the response-selection machinery breaking down.

[Wiz Imp]

5. Like in his first term where everything was to haappen in "2 weeks"

[Torchlight]

2. A trick he's learning in Memory Care to remember the next day's date?

At the end, grammy put a post-it on the front door so she'd remember to wear pants when she walked outside. It happens, we get old, out brains sometimes turn to grape jam (and the resulting orange and purple palette from Mr. trump could come straight from a Kirby comic book).

[usonian]

3. Musk is the "22" freak, and rump thinks he's Ben Roethlisberger (plus 40).

I looked up Musk and 22 for the FAFO collection
www.democraticunderground.com/100219770873

[eppur_se_muova]

4. A surveyor's chain is 22 yards long. 80 chains make a mile.

That's why we have to remember those weird numbers -- 1760 yards = 5280 feet = 22 x 240 '

Ten square chains (NOT a square ten chains on a side), i.e. 4,840 square yards, make an acre, which is actually defined as one chain by one furlong (a furlong is 10 chains), or 1/640 of a square mile.

It's all so consistently systematic !

[Happy Hoosier]

6. It's a sign of dementia.

That kind of hyperfixation on a specific number is a struggle for stability and comprehensibility. It is very common in people demonstrating early symptoms of dementia.

Not saying he has dementia..... but he has dementia.

[Blue Owl]

7. Let's give him the 'ol 22 skidoo....

[usedtobedemgurl]

8. I wonder why it is 22.

I would have thought Epstein’s bestie would be obsessed with 10 or 8 or even 7.

[malaise]

9. I thought his obsession was the

22nd Amendment