Is it shocking to hear profanity from the President of the United States
“We have two countries that have been fighting so long and hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”~Donald Trump, President of the United States of America.
I’m not offended about language. I’ve been known to use the word ‘fuck’ in this column many times. I’ve also said it aloud far too often. On Monday, I was in Charlottesville, Virginia. When I stepped out of the car into 100 degrees heat, I said “Fuck, it’s hot here.” Not my finest moment, as there were three young children nearby. I did apologize, but still…
But…I’m not the President of the United States!!
I’m not naive; we’ve known our government officials have used profanity for a long time. We lost our innocence about this five decades ago when Richard Nixon was the president. In reality, it probably goes back as far as George Washington. But it was almost always in private conversations.
When I first heard the clip of the top sentence, I had to rewind it a few times to make sure I heard it correctly. I just shook my head, said to myself, ‘That’s fucking Trump,’ and continued on with my day.
But, it’s not only the presidents that drop an unexpected profanity. Remember when former Attorney General Bill Barr proclaimed that something was “bullshit?” It led to hosts and guests on MSNBC using the word. If Barr can say it, why not Nicolle Wallace and Claire McCaskill?
And don’t get me started about sports. Every baseball argument between a player or manager and an umpire has someone dropping an F-bomb—usually multiple ones. In 2013, at the Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup Championship parade, their Goaltender Corey Crawford greeted the crowd with “Fucking right Chicago!”
It even occurs in the world of music. Remember when Country Joe McDonald took the stage at Woodstock and started this chant:
“Gimme an F. Gimme a U. Gimme a C. Gimme a K. What’s that spell?! What’s that spell?! What’s that spell?”
The crowd knew what it spelled—and so do we. A couple of years later, I saw Country Joe in concert. He opened the show with the same chant. I yelled it as loudly as anyone. Don’t tell my mom—who, by the way, regularly told me to “shut the fuck up.” Maybe that’s where I got it from, ya think?
But back to Trump—a few weeks ago, I was at the No Kings protest. I saw a woman wearing a ‘FDT’ baseball cap. I asked her if it stood for ‘Fuck Donald Trump?’ She laughed, because we both knew it did, and then she responded, “Fuck, yeah!” Classy, I know, but that’s the state of America in 2025–“FUCK, YEAH!!”