Trump's WTF Moment
Another presidential norm is shattered as an F-bomb is dropped on the White House South Lawn
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, on the White House South Lawn this morning, said it. Pausing to answer questions from a cluster of reporters he uttered that four-letter word never before spoken before deliberately spoken to video cameras by an American commander-in-chief.
Admonishing both Iran and Israel, as the ceasefire Trump trumpeted the previous day threatened to quickly crumble, the president, said, “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”
He added, “You understand that?” before walking away to board Marine One on the short ride to Joint Base Andrews for the Air Force One flight across the Atlantic to attend the NATO Summit at The Hague.
“You can feel the force of the F-bomb,” remarked John Kelly, who previously ran dictionary.com and defined slang for Merriam-Webster. “It's another norm shattered. Another taboo pushed. And whether or not we know the psychological reasons why we swear, most of us know we aren't supposed to and at least not as Trump did.”
According to Kelly, now a senior consultant and head of business development at the Boldsquare strategic communications practice, Trump did not just cross a Rubicon in terms of the presidency, but also raised concern about where else Trump may not show restraint.
“It frays the hem of our American social contract—of who we think we are and what we value,” Kelly told me.
As Trump unleashed the choice expletive C-SPAN did not censor it. CNN, on its online post of the video, beeped the word, although the 1 kilohertz tone was of such short duration the first consonant escaped the sheath.
The president “intentionally used it in public to evoke manliness and toughness in dealing with Israel and Iran,” says University of Akron Professor of Political Science David B. Cohen.
Trump five years ago, also speaking about Iran and bombs, had uttered the expletive on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program.
“American presidents simply do not talk or behave this way—until now. We’ve seen a great deal of rough language from Trump over the last ten years. This is just the next step in so many lines being crossed and erased. And this surely won’t be the last time we hear that language, or similar language, coming out of his mouth,” adds Cohen, who is co-authoring a manuscript to be published by the University Press of Kansas titled “The President's Chief of Staff: Evolution of a White House Institution.” (Presidential chiefs of staff, by contrast, are notorious for constant cursing; it might be a job requirement.)
Professor Cohen laments that Trump’s language and behavior unfortunately “has become normalized. It will barely merit being considered a controversy.”
It is a consideration, if not a controversy, at least for this hot moment.
“The phrase "the fuck" in "what the fuck" serves as an intensifier, like "the hell", making the "what" stronger. It's been in use for a long time, but I don't think it has ever made headlines before,” says Irish writer-editor Stan Carey, a co-founder of the Strong Language group blog and a columnist on writing for Macmillan Dictionary.
Broadcasters initially faced a Trump censoring dilemma when the Access Hollywood tape was released in 2016, a month before the presidential election and the Republican nominee’s victory. The vulgar misogyny, which briefly threatened to destroy Trump’s campaign, was actually a hot mic moment from eleven years prior.
Radio and television broadcasters today find themselves in the unique position of essentially censoring a sitting president. They hold licenses issued by the Federal Communications Commission and thus are subject to the Indecency Rule, prohibiting between the hours of 6 am and 10pm patently offensive language or material (measured by contemporary community standards).
Should a broadcaster’s uncensored airing result in a viewer or listener complaint, it could put the current FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, a Trump loyalist, in the uncomfortable position of contemplating action against a licensee for disseminating a verbatim remark of the president. Carr, it should be noted, is proactive in targeting media companies for alleged anti-Trump bias.
Cable networks and streaming services, which do not utilize over-the-air radio/TV frequencies are not FCC licensees, thus free of such restrictions, allowing them greater latitude with language and imagery.
The lawyers for broadcasters know where to draw the line. The Supreme Court in 1978 upheld the FCC’s authority in this regard. That was five years about a liberal New York City non-commercial radio station, WBAI, aired George Carlin’s comedic ‘Seven Dirty Words’ monologue. The broadcaster was admonished but not fined by the FCC. WBAI’s owner, the Pacifica Foundation, claimed even the slap on the hands violated the First Amendment, so it sued and the rest is legal and broadcasting history.
U.S. presidents, since the time Warren Harding made history and delivered a speech on the radio in 1922, have modulated their on-air rhetoric. The decorum of the office alone meant, even in recent decades, usually not daring to venture beyond an occasional ‘hell’ or ‘damn.’
That is not to imply that presidents, in private, were prudes. I explored this matter to some degree in my most recent book, “Behind the White House Curtain: A Senior Journalist’s Story of Covering the President – and Why It Matters.” (Kent State University Press, 2024).
As I detailed in the book, President Lyndon Johnson was notorious for his frequent use of obscenities. Reporters did hear him swear constantly, but it was off the record and not delivered to radio or TV microphones.
Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, strayed from Quaker roots and the Constitution. On Oval Office audio tapes he secretly recorded his meetings and phone calls. Nixon can be heard swearing freely and frequently, including complaining about “the fucking Jews,” even though his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, was Jewish. Nixon also railed about African-Americans (using the N word), Italians and the Irish. It’s not clear he really liked anybody.
Attempting to pivot from his image as a Sunday School teacher, Jimmy Carter, during the 1976 presidential campaign told Norman Mailer, “I don’t care if people say fuck.” Mailer spelled it out in his manuscript, but the four-letter word was rendered as a dash when the interview was published in the New York Times Magazine. The article explained that the Democratic Party nominee “actually said the famous four-letter word that The Times has not printed in the 125 years of its publishing life.''
Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose marital spats in and outside the White House were frequently overheard by their Secret Service protective details, hurled the F-word at each other without hesitation.
Dick Cheney, as the Republican vice president in 2004, smarting over Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy’s previous criticism of him for his ties to an oil services company Cheney had headed, on the Senate floor told the ranking member of the judiciary committee to “go fuck yourself.” Senate staffers and journalists overheard it. Cheney later said he was glad he told Cheney to attempt an anatomical impossibility.
Joe Biden, as President Obama’s understudy in 2010 , whispered the BFD phrase into the ear of his boss, which was caught on a hot mic, during a White House East Room event to celebrate the Affordable Care Act.
Biden, as president in 2022, surveying hurricane damage in Florida, did it again. Apparently forgetting a wireless microphone had been clipped on clothing, the president told Fort Myers Beach Mayor Ray Murphy that “no one fucks with a Biden.”
Kamala Harris, as vice president, a couple of months before a faltering Biden was politically sidelined so that she could become the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, broke the F-word barrier as the second-in-command. Speaking at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies’ Legislative Leadership Summit, Harris said: “We have to know that sometimes, people will open the door for you and leave it open, sometimes they won’t. And then you need to kick that fucking door down,”
As the audience cheered, Harris chuckled and added, “Excuse my language.”
Trump’s brand, of course, includes no apologies, and is about “breaking the rules,” notes Kelly, who has anointed the president as Edgelord-in-Chief. “There's little evidence he pays much consequence for it.”
Of course, his lack of control of the English language is going to be now considered the norm. No matter if there's a lack of discipline or lack of class or a lack of.. whatever. All I know is he's very close to that red button and all it takes is just him losing his temper, not knowing if it's to show how manly he is or just be on set of dementia. He keeps violating the law in every sense of the word. And somebody's going to explain it away. It gave me a chill down my back when I heard him talk to those reporters in that tone and in that vernacular. And in essence he was talking to us too. A little more than a loose cannon.
I was pleasantly reminded that Rush Limbaugh is dead, reading this.