The new status quo
Remember when a politician getting caught on a hot mic saying a bad word was a career-ending scandal? Yeah, those days are long gone. Over the last decade, Donald Trump has lowkey rewritten the rulebook on how a president is 'allowed' to speak in public. It is giving less 'dignified statesman' and more 'whatever I want.'
While previous presidents like Nixon or LBJ definitely had potty mouths, they kept it strictly in the DMs—or behind closed doors. Now, the real tea is that the filter is completely gone. Trump has publicly dropped F-bombs regarding foreign policy crises in Israel, Iran, and Venezuela. He even took to Truth Social to tell Iran to 'open the fuckin’ strait.'
It’s not just the president
Trump might have opened the floodgates, but the rest of the political class is following the vibe. Vice-president JD Vance has been spotted throwing around profanity to troll critics, and defense secretary Pete Hegseth isn't shy about calling previous military practices 'that shit' to get his point across. Even Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey and senator Tammy Duckworth have used colorful language to express frustration with their political opponents.
So why is everyone suddenly acting like a sailor? Experts argue it’s a desperate attempt to appear 'real.' Since political trust is at an all-time low, swearing is a hack to seem like an everyday person rather than an out-of-touch suit. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of the 'would you want to have a beer with them' test.
Why it matters
What this means for you is that the bar for 'presidential' behavior has officially been lowered. Analysts suggest we are in such a heated era of polarization that we might soon hear profanity in major speeches like the State of the Union. While it might help these politicians land a W in their next election, it raises a bigger question: is our political culture becoming permanently coarser, or is this just a phase that the next generation will eventually reject? Say less—we'll be watching.
