“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
So said Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address, a two-minute speech widely regarded as the most eloquent oration a US president has ever delivered.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” challenged John F Kennedy during his inaugural address in 1961, in another rhetorical flight of fancy.
“Open the F**kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” harrumphed Donald Trump on Easter Sunday in a Truth Social post aimed at Iran.
Maybe it is unfair to contrast the profanities of Trump with the poetry of his predecessors, but his is the sweariest President in US history.
Coarse language is a defining characteristic of his rambunctious political style, a lingua franca that helped make him an anti-establishment anti-politician after he first came down that golden escalator in 2015.
Saying the unsayable set the New York property tycoon apart. Foul-mouthed social media posts became his calling card and fired up his base. Trump told rally-goers to “knock the crap” out of would-be hecklers, promised to “kick the shit” out of the Islamic State and said corporations that did not like his tax plans could go “f**k themselves”. All of this was music to what became Maga ears.
Winning the presidency in 2016 did nothing to purify Trump’s potty mouth. On entering the White House, a veritable bingo card of swear words did not take long to tick off. “BULLSHIT” is how he described the first impeachment inquiry mounted by Democrats on Capitol Hill.
On social media, he retweeted an obscenity intended as a compliment from the UFC fighter, Jorge Masvidal, who described the President admiringly as “a bad motherf**ker”. The former Republican senator, Mitt Romney, who was a frequent critic of the President, was a “pompous ass”.
As well as social media posts, Donald Trump has sworn repeatedly during campaign rallies (Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty)Small wonder the New York Times in 2019 dubbed Trump “the profanity president”. It said that in one rally speech alone, Trump had uttered 10 “hells”, three “damns” and a “crap”. That same year, C-Span, the US cable channel which broadcasts the proceedings of Congress and most presidential addresses, even issued a disclaimer when it reran one of the Trump’s saltier speeches.
“The President used language that some may find offensive,” it warned viewers. It is quite something when presidential speeches become a matter of parental guidance.
In private, Trump’s language has been even more X-rated. At an Oval Office meeting in January 2018, the President referred to African nations and Haiti as “shithole” countries. “I’m f**ked,” was his reaction to hearing that former FBI director Robert Mueller had been appointed to investigate alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign.
For US presidents, using expletives in the privacy of the White House is nothing new. Lyndon B Johnson, a bullying foul-mouthed Texan, used swear words as punctuation.
Tape recordings which emerged during the Watergate scandal revealed Richard Nixon to be a serial swearer. “Bullshit,” “a bunch of crap,” “I don’t give a shit” and “asshole” regularly featured in his repertoire.
Joe Biden, in comments which he thought were off-mike, described the passage of the Affordable Care Act as a “big f**king deal”. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris, as vice president, frequently used the word motherf**ker. In fact, she expressed pride, according to Bob Woodward’s fly-on-the-wall book War, at knowing how to pronounce it correctly.
However, the key difference is that Trump has unabashedly taken his profanities public.
In his 2024 campaign for the presidency, the New York Times reckoned he cursed in public at least 1,787 times. A “shit vice president,” is how he described Harris. And his crudity has become contagious.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during a presidential debate in September 2024 (Photo: VCG/Getty)His rally at Madison Square Garden, shortly before election day, became a swearfest. One speaker described Trump as “the greatest f**king president in the world.” Another labelled Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a bitch”.
In his second term, Trump has been even more unleashed than in his first. Analysis recently conducted by the Washington Post showed that during the first 18 months of Trump 1.0, about 40 per cent of his speeches contained at least one vulgar term. Over the same period of Trump 2.0, that figure is 93 per cent.
And the President’s obscenity has created a permission structure for others within his administration. When former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo criticised the proposed peace deal with Iran as being “not remotely America First”, the White House fired back. Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung told Pompeo to “shut his stupid mouth” and said the former senior Trump official “has no idea what the f**k he’s talking about”.
On the scale of presidential norm-busting, swearing is not considered a biggie. Trump was re-elected after being convicted on 34 felony counts and after refusing to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election. He was a central figure in the 6 January storming of the US Capitol and pardoned more than 1,500 of the “J6” rioters on his return to power.
While some of Trump’s evangelical supporters have voiced concerns about his profanities, religious leaders on the Christian right, such as former Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr, have continued to defend him, saying America is not electing a Sunday school teacher.
Among Maga devotees, Trump’s swearing acts as a bonding mechanism. It demonstrates a cultural affinity with his base. Liberal disapproval is seen as elite sneering.
As Trump has aged – he will be 80 next month – he might also be exhibiting what psychologists call disinhibition, a disposition towards outbursts and the failure to deploy a self-edit function – to the extent that he ever had one. It is tempting to describe the President’s more frequent use of swear words as a form of Trumpian Tourette’s syndrome.
Barack Obama, the most lyrical of recent presidents, once said: “The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ We the People. We Shall Overcome. Yes We Can. It is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given, to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”
To that, the current President would probably reply “bullshit”.
Though it is often said that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose, Trump has upended that aphorism. He has campaigned and governed on a rich tide of profanities.
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