§40 —
On two weeks
Democrat
147 DAYS
Take the two biggest promises the phrase was attached to and put a calendar against them. On July 19, 2020, on television: "We're signing a health-care plan within two weeks" 1. He left office six months later without one 2.
On May 28, 2025, asked whether Russia's president was stringing him along on Ukraine: "I'll let you know in about two weeks" 3. On August 22 the answer was "a couple of weeks" again 4. The first significant sanctions on Russian oil, against Rosneft and Lukoil, came on October 22 — one hundred and forty-seven days after the two weeks began 5. Nobody has been misled about a deadline here; the deadline was never the point. The point is that the clock is a way to make a question go away, and the question in this case was a war.
Sources
- "We're signing a health-care plan within two weeks," 19 July 2020 — The Washington Post, 1 August 2020 ↑
- He left office in January 2021 with no health care plan issued — Yahoo News ↑
- "I'll let you know in about two weeks" on whether Putin was stalling, 28 May 2025 — CNN ↑
- "A couple of weeks" again, 22 August 2025 — CNN ↑
- Sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil announced 22 October 2025 — Foreign Policy ↑
Republican
TWO WEEKS
The device is real and it is not always empty, which is the honest place to start. Setting a public clock tells the other side you intend to move without committing to what the move is. Twice in one month last year it ran ahead of schedule rather than behind: on June 12 he said tariff letters were coming in two weeks and they went out July 7; on June 19 he said he would decide on Iran within two weeks, and the strikes came on the 21st 123.
So the phrase can mean what it says, and occasionally it means sooner. It has been in service since at least April 2017, when the infrastructure announcement was two weeks out 4. What it costs to use it this often is on the other side of the page, in days.
Sources
- "Tariff letters in two weeks" — Bloomberg, 12 June 2025 ↑
- The tariff letters were sent 7 July 2025 — NPR ↑
- "I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks," 19 June 2025; strikes followed on 21 June — Fox News ↑
- "We're going to make an announcement in two weeks" on infrastructure, 5 April 2017 — Axios, 15 December 2017 ↑
“Two weeks. I'm going to be a nuisance about this one, I apologize in advance. April 2017, the infrastructure announcement: two weeks. July 2020, on television: "We're signing a health-care plan within two weeks" — and January comes, and there's no plan. May 28th of last year, on Russia: "I'll let you know in about two weeks." The sanctions came October twenty-second. I did the arithmetic on the back of an envelope in the glovebox, twice, because I kept getting a number I didn't like: a hundred and forty-seven days. Sorry, I know, I keep coming back to it. If two weeks is fourteen days, what is a hundred and forty-seven?”— Lou
“Two weeks. The health care plan was two weeks out in July of 2020 and it did not come at all. The Russia decision was two weeks out on the twenty-eighth of May, and the sanctions landed a hundred and forty-seven days later. Two weeks isn't a schedule. It's a way to end a sentence — it means stop asking — and the only reason it works is that nobody goes back with a calendar.”
“"Two weeks" indicates imminence rather than duration, and treating a figure of speech as a unit of time is a category error that reflects on the listener, not the speaker, who was simply being encouraging.”