The language of politicians has become more vulgar in recent years. Leaders in both parties are openly using vulgarities. President Trump recently referred to alleged drug smugglers with an expletive during a Cabinet meeting.
As he shook President Barack Obama’s hand and pulled him in for what he thought was a private aside, Vice President Joe Biden delivered an explicit message: “This is a big f——— deal.” The remark, overheard on live microphones at a 2010 ceremony for the Affordable Care Act, caused a sensation because open profanity from a national leader was unusual at the time.
More than 15 years later, vulgarity is now in vogue.
During a political rally Tuesday night in Pennsylvania that was intended to focus on tackling inflation, President Donald Trump used profanity at least four times. At one point, he even admitted to disparaging Haiti and African nations as “ shithole countries ” during a private 2018 meeting, a comment he denied at the time. And before a bank of cameras during a lengthy Cabinet meeting last week, the Republican president referred to alleged drug smugglers as “sons of b——-s.”
While the Biden incident was accidental, the frequency, sharpness and public nature of Trump’s comments are intentional. They build on his project to combat what he sees as pervasive political correctness. Leaders in both parties are seemingly in a race now to the verbal gutter.
Vice President JD Vance called a podcast host a “dips—t” in September. In Thanksgiving remarks before troops, Vance joked that anyone who said they liked turkey was “full of s—-.” After one National Guard member was killed in a shooting in Washington last month and a second was critically injured, top Trump aide Steven Cheung told a reporter on social media to “shut the f—- up” when she wrote that the deployment of troops in the nation’s capital was “for political show.”
The volley of vulgarities underscore an ever-coarsening political environment that often plays out on social media or other digital platforms where the posts or video clips that evoke the strongest emotions are rewarded with the most engagement.
