Stick in Donald Trump’s craw?

Reader question:

Please explain “stick in Donald Trump’s craw” in this sentence: Obama’s 2009 Nobel Prize continues to stick in Donald Trump’s craw, a decade-and-a-half later.

My comments:

Barack Obama, that is, who was President of the United States in 2008-2016.

Donald Trump is the current President of the United States.

If you follow the news, Trump wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He wants to win it pretty bad. One time, he claimed that he had stopped six wars – one war per month since he re-took the White House, having first won the election in 2016. On another occasion, he claimed that he’d stopped seven wars. Last week, he raised the number again, claiming he’s stopped an incredible 10 wars.

I’m not making it up. Read this report, per NJ.com (How many wars has Trump ended? He just offered a revised count, August 21, 2025):

President Donald Trump has upped his figure for the number of wars he has ended since starting his second term.

While speaking on the “Todd Starnes Show,” Trump on Thursday said he may have solved at least 10 conflicts.

“They wrote an article that they gave me three additional ones that I ended without even knowing it. I saw things were going bad, and it looked like it was going to go bad, and it could have been 10,” Trump told the conservative radio host.

Anyways, Trump thinks he’s more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama, who won it in 2009.

And, to Trump, the fact that Obama, who black and a Democrat, won it is particularly irksome.

More than irksome. For more than a decade-and-a-half, it has stuck in Trumps craw.

Like someone has pushed a stick down Trump’s throat.

Eurgh!

Exactly.

Craw in the idiom “stick in someone’s craw”, you see, refers to the stomach or pouch of a bird. The craw of a chicken, for example, is where it temporarily stores food. The craw is located right down its neck.

If you push a stick down its throat and into its craw…, well, that should never happen.

Metaphorically, if you pushed a stick down the throat of someone, it would be impossibly painful to them, as you can imagine.

Hence, idiomatically, if something sticks in someone’s craw, it is, like I said, irksome.

It bothers them greatly. It irritates them. It makes them angry. It gives them all sorts of discomfort.

That is the case with Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. It rattles Trump because he wants it so bad, because he thinks he deserves it more, whether you agree with him or not.

Anyways, we’ve learned the meaning of the idiom “stick in someone’s craw”. Now, let’s read the following media examples to help us memorize it:

1. Telephones and not just televisions should be allowed in prisoners’ cells, the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service has suggested.

Colin McConnell said helping people keep in touch with their families could help prevent reoffending.

He raised the idea with MSPs on Holyrood’s Justice Committee.

“I know that might stick in the craw of certain members of the public and maybe some members sitting round the table here,” Mr McConnell admitted.

“It seems to me you get people to behave normally if you treat them normally; you try and recreate normality.

“One of the things that’s generally accepted helps towards reducing reoffending is relationships and family contact.

“Anything reasonably and safely we can do to help sustain and develop family contact, we should give it a go.”

Mr McConnell admitted, in mentioning phones in cells, he was being “a wee bit reformist”.

The SPS chief executive said he is a “fan of TVs in cells” for prisoners, with “loads of positives that come from that”.

Labour MSP Graeme Pearson, a former director general of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, asked Mr McConnell if a 01:00 television curfew in operation at Low Moss Prison in Bishopbriggs should be extended to all prisoners.

The SPS chief executive replied that television could be a “window on the world”.

“It’s about keeping informed about what’s going on and actually it’s a displacement activity as well,” he said.

“If it stops somebody thinking horrible thoughts about themselves or others and encourages discourse about Coronation Street, the news or whatever it might be, I think there’s loads of positives that come from that.

“I know it’s one of those issues that polarises people, but I think there’s a place for it. Whether it should have a curfew, I think there are pros and cons.

“I’d much rather treat people with the respect and decency in the sense of ‘please use it sensibly’ and those that don’t, we might have to curtail it.”

- Phones in cells idea for Scots inmates raised by prison service chief, BBC.com, January 29, 2013.

2. Any legal loss for Prince Harry will hurt, but this case is perhaps less of a priority than his others.

That said, it’s still a blow for Team Sussex, who have spent a lot of time and money on this litigation.

It’s all about Harry’s long-running legal fight with the Home Office and the decision to remove his automatic security.

Harry claimed the Mail on Sunday article about his case was an attack on his honesty and integrity. The Mail on Sunday argued it was “honest opinion”. And to that end a judge agreed. That is why last year Harry was ordered to pay the publisher over ￡48,000.

It was a major turning point for the case. And now, the news the Duke of Sussex has decided to pull the plug on this litigation.

It’s going to be costly. Harry is liable to foot the bill for both sides’ legal costs which will be hundreds of thousands of pounds.

He can of course afford it, but there is a personal cost to this too. He’s taken on a tabloid and lost, and that will stick in the craw of the prince who once vowed to make changing the media landscape his “life’s work”.

This is by no means the end of Harry’s name on High Court papers.

He still has three ongoing cases.

- Mail on Sunday case is not Prince Harry's priority – but withdrawing libel claim still a blow to Team Sussex, Sky.com, January 19, 2024.

3. In mortarboards and crimson-fringed gowns, thousands of students were joined by smiling families for the centuries-old ritual of graduation day. But this year was different.

Alan Garber, the president of Harvard University, received a standing ovation and welcomed graduates “from down the street, across the country and around the world”, drawing applause for the last words: “Around the world – just as it should be.”

It was a nod, subtle but firm, to the international students who are part of the lifeblood of Harvard but now a target for Donald Trump: his administration is seeking to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll students from overseas. It is just one front in an escalating battle between a US president with authoritarian ambitions and the country’s oldest, wealthiest and most prestigious university.

Since taking office more than four months ago, Trump has used executive power to take aim at Congress, law firms, media organisations, cultural institutions and leading universities. Some have resisted but many have capitulated. In Harvard, the man who urged his supporters to “fight, fight, fight” faces a resilient foe unlike any he has taken on before.

Its emergence as a bulwark of the opposition to Trump was summed up by this year’s Class Day speaker at Harvard, the former basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “After seeing so many cowering billionaires, media moguls, law firms, politicians and other universities bend their knee to an administration that is systematically strip-mining the US constitution, it is inspiring to me to see Harvard University take a stand for freedom.”

Harvard was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1636, a century and a half before the nation itself. Its alumni include the former presidents John F Kennedy and Barack Obama, supreme court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, tech entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, actors Matt Damon and Natalie Portman and writer Margaret Atwood.

Now it is in Trump’s crosshairs. The administration claims its actions are aimed at tackling issues such as antisemitism on campus, discrimination – particularly against white, Asian, male and straight individuals – foreign influence from China, and perceived “woke” or “leftist” ideology in academia.

…

Academics at Harvard trust that the rule of law will prevail in their own case. Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law emeritus, said: “I think we’re going to win the battle in the courts. These are open-and-shut cases.

“In fact, in the federal courts in the month of May, there were a lot of battles involving Trump against various individuals and institutions, and you know what his record was? He lost 96% of them. The percentage that he lost was not very different depending on which president appointed the judge, because these are easy legal questions.”

Holding firm is crucial, Tribe believes, because Trump is trying to pick off universities one by one, just as he did with law firms. At stake is a stand against authoritarianism and the hope that courage will be contagious.

“If they can’t control the university, they want to disband it because the first thought of a tyrant is to suppress the power of reason and the citadel of freedom,” Tribe said. “That is the university. It’s been true since the Middle Ages. Harvard has an emblematic significance that makes it stick in Donald Trump’s craw. Its motto ‘veritas’ must irritate the hell out of him because truth is his enemy.”

- Why Trump is really going after Harvard, TheGuardian.com, June 1, 2025.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）