The word returned to use during the
2016 U.S. presidential campaign, particularly by opponents and critics of Republican presidential candidate
Donald Trump.
[9] In May 2016, academic and blogger Amro Ali argued that kakistocracy was a word that needed to be revived.
[10] Salon would later credit Ali's blog post with initiating a wider conversation on the term.
[11] In August 2016, Dan Leger of the
Halifax newspaper
The Chronicle Herald suggested that a Trump victory in the U.S. presidential election would require renewed use of the term "kakistocracy."
[12] Since Trump's victory in the presidential election, the word has been used to describe the Trump administration by critics of that administration on multiple occasions.
[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] On 29 June 2017,
Merriam-Webster reported that searches for the word on its online dictionary had spiked to an all-time high that day.
[3] The Washington Post reported on the use of the word going viral to describe the Trump administration on 13 April 2018.
[24]