"It can only good happen"?
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This sequence has been extensively meme-ified:
The hat, for example:
I haven't seen a plausible account of where "it can only good happen" comes from — can any of you help?
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Stephen Goranson said,
September 29, 2025 @ 1:14 pm
Guess: if you don't take the RFK Jr-opposed med, all consequences will be good, cough.
Coby said,
September 29, 2025 @ 1:20 pm
Could he have heard it from his grandparents? Es kann nur Gutes geschehen is perfectly good German.
kormac said,
September 29, 2025 @ 1:23 pm
He was misquoting Yoda; "Nothing bad happen can, it can only good happen."
Jerry Packard said,
September 29, 2025 @ 2:03 pm
Yes, this was a beautiful error. My explanation was that the ok “Nothing bad can happen” provided Trump’s processor with the ability of ‘bad’ to precede ‘happen’ (licensed by the aux ‘can’), and so the ‘good happen’’ was primed to occur by the ‘bad happen’, even though the aux ‘can’ was omitted.
Jerry Packard said,
September 29, 2025 @ 2:16 pm
…or I should have said, “…even though the aux ‘can’ did not appear in its licensing position.”
Julian said,
September 29, 2025 @ 3:38 pm
A mashup with "It can't be bad; it can only be good"?
Victor Mair said,
September 29, 2025 @ 5:17 pm
I thought exactly the same thing that Coby did: sounded like perfectly good German syntax to me, something my father and his Austrian relatives might have said.
Yuval said,
September 30, 2025 @ 2:36 am
Tremendous oven meme vibes.
Jerry Packard said,
September 30, 2025 @ 7:38 am
@Yuval
Why do they call it oven when you of in the cold food of out hot eat the food? > Why do they call it oven when you of in the cold food AND of out hot eat the food?
…the AND makes it eminently parseable.
anon said,
September 30, 2025 @ 5:05 pm
"WE ARE ANNOUNCING A NEW MAGA ENGLISH LEARNING COURSE EPSTEIN DISTRACTION TODAY. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
Roscoe said,
October 1, 2025 @ 7:55 pm
@Coby, Victor Mair: Wouldn’t be the first time a Trump speech probably sounded better in the original German.
ajay said,
October 2, 2025 @ 11:24 am
Could he have heard it from his grandparents? Es kann nur Gutes geschehen is perfectly good German.
Well, his grandfather died long before he was born (in the 1918 pandemic) but his paternal grandmother founded the family firm and lived until he was in his 20s, so maybe?