Trump is a magpie, borrowing his most famous lines: “Make America great again” from Ronald Reagan; “America first” from Charles Lindbergh; “fake news” from Hillary Clinton. He nicked “presidential harassment” from Senator Mitch McConnell. The Senate majority leader seems to have coined the phrase in an October 10 Associated Press interview, and then reprised it the day after the midterm election, warning Democrats against prying too deeply into Trump’s affairs.

“The whole issue of presidential harassment is interesting,” McConnell said. “I remember when we tried it in the late ’90s. We impeached President Clinton. His numbers went up and ours went down and we underperformed in the next election.”

Leaving aside whether McConnell offered this advice in good faith, he meant it in a limited sense of oversight investigations. Trump, displaying his knack for branding, has quickly expanded the phrase to encompass any kind of criticism. First came this tweet, five days after McConnell’s post-election warning, and seeming to follow the same definition:

The prospect of Presidential Harassment by the Dems is causing the Stock Market big headaches! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2018

Two days later, in an interview with The Daily Caller, Trump said:

I think we’ll do very well if they want to play the presidential harassment game. If they play the presidential harassment game I don’t think anything’s going to be done ’cause why would I do that, okay? If they want to get things done I think it will be fantastic, I think we can get a lot done.

Three days after that, he used it again during a gaggle, this time in a riff about the presumptive Democratic House leader, who was then fending off a leadership challenge:

I like Nancy Pelosi. I mean, she’s tough and she’s smart. But she deserves to be speaker. And now they’re playing games with her just like they’ll be playing with me with—it’s called “presidential harassment.” The president of your country is doing a great job, but he’s being harassed. It’s presidential harassment.

In addition to the odd dip into the third person, this represents an important step in Trump’s process for reifying his claims, with “it’s called” serving a purpose similar to “many people are saying,” when in fact only he is saying it, or the one calling it that. Already, the meaning is slipping—opposing Pelosi is harassment, just as opposing Trump constitutes harassment. See, for example, this December 6 invocation:

Without the phony Russia Witch Hunt, and with all that we have accomplished in the last almost two years (Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judge’s, Military, Vets, etc.) my approval rating would be at 75% rather than the 50% just reported by Rasmussen. It’s called Presidential Harassment! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2018

On December 23, he complained on Twitter, “Presidential Harassment has been with me from the beginning!” Two days later, during a videoconference with members of the military, Trump couldn’t resist turning the occasion into a political rally. Asked about what to expect in the new Congress, he answered, “Well, then probably presidential harassment, and we know how to handle that. I think I handle that better than anybody. There’s been no collusion.”