Coined by John Scalzi on July 16, 2016 after reading
journalist Josh Marshall's process for
understanding the basis of many of
Donald Trump's decisions, "Trump's razor" is a riff on "Occam's razor".
Josh Marshall: "According to Trump’s Razor: 'ascertain the stupidest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the available facts' and that answer is likely correct." Or, "to phrase the principle in Occam’s terms, it tells us ‘the stupidest scenario is always to be preferred’."
When
the National Weather Service contradicted President Trump's tweet that Alabama--among other states--would “most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated," Trump would days later hold up an official NOAA weather map that was absurdly altered with a Sharpie to include Alabama in the hurricane's prior predicted zone of landfall.
Did
Donald Trump himself--irritated and embarassed that a government agency had corrected his misstatement--grab a Sharpie and alter the NOAA map, which weather experts noted would be an illegal act? Trump's razor says yes, that's the most likely scenario since it's the most plausible yet
ridiculous one.