OPINION:
Three weeks ago, these pages took President Trump to task for his tasteless and unpresidential response to news of the death of a political adversary, former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
Still, Mr. Trump apparently didn’t get the message about the need to maintain respect for and uphold the dignity of the high office to which he was elected.
That was made explicitly clear on Easter Sunday, when he gave new meaning to the term “shock and awe” — with an F-bomb, in addition to the real bombs being dropped on Iran.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the [f—-ing] Strait [of Hormuz], you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!” he wrote in a Truth Social post in an apocalyptic warning to the mullahs of the Islamist theocratic dictatorship in Tehran to do the right thing — or else.
The president’s intemperate message regarding what he was prepared to do to Iran’s civilian infrastructure, delivered on Easter, was unorthodox (pun intended), to say the least.
Even those who might otherwise support Mr. Trump’s muscular approach to defanging the Iranian regime rightly took offense at his gratuitous use of profanity, particularly on the highest holy day of the year on the Christian calendar.
Yet Mr. Trump is far from being solely responsible for the coarsening of the political dialogue today, according to a new analysis by The New York Times of the use of the F-bomb by politicians over the past six years.
The newspaper on April 9 reported its findings that Democratic elected officials and candidates are far more likely than their Republican counterparts to contribute to the debasement of the political dialogue with the heretofore taboo expletive.
In its comprehensive review of the posts on the social media platform X of all governors and members of Congress from January 2020 to March of this year, The New York Times found only one Republican among the top eight politicians most frequently lobbing that verbal hand grenade.
The most frequent contributor to this societal entropy — a race to the bottom — was freshman Sen. Ruben Gallego, Arizona Democrat, with 77 uses of the F-bomb on X since 2020, many of them even before he was elected to the Senate in November 2024.
That was more than double the 35 times second-place Rep. Derrick Van Orden, Wisconsin Republican, used the expletive undeleted. Among the six Democrats who rounded out the Top 8 political potty-mouths was Rep. Eric Swalwell of California and “Fang Fang” fame, with 29 F-bombs.
Fellow Democrat and Golden State politician Gov. Gavin Newsom holds the dubious distinction of “the most viral post involving the word in the past six years,” according to The New York Times. The outlet noted that Mr. Newsom’s “vulgarity-laden missive in February,” directed at Fox News host Sean Hannity, “attracted 19.8 million views.”
It should come as no surprise, however, that the largest share of unhinged Democrats’ F-bombs were aimed at Mr. Trump (60, by The New York Times’ count), followed by other Republican politicians (41), and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and/or immigration enforcement generally (25).
By comparison, Republican politicians dropped F-bombs on their Democratic counterparts 11 times — far fewer, but still unseemly.
What the newspaper described as “Exhibit A” — which had even the Gray Lady blushing a bit — came from Rep. Susie Lee, Nevada Democrat, when she heard that the president planned to sit in on the Supreme Court’s April 1 hearing on birthright citizenship.
“So f—-ing f—-ed up,” the four-term lawmaker wrote in an X post that was subsequently deleted. “Sorry, I say f—- a lot these days.”
The newspaper’s report, headlined “Online and on the stump, Democrats Embrace a Four-Letter Word,” noted that the foul language “has seeped out of the internet and into real life too. Democratic candidates are using the word — angrily, joyfully, self-righteously, sometimes performatively — in interviews, news releases, and fund-raising pleas.”
Once the staple in public chiefly of foul-mouthed rappers and comedians, F-bombs have regrettably become all too common in the political zeitgeist, particularly among Democrats. Besides being undignified, it reflects a sad poverty of vocabulary, and we shouldn’t be accepting of that.
It almost makes one hark back fondly to the days of old, when a parent would threaten to wash out their child’s mouth with soap if he or she used such language. The equivalent today in the political realm would be to threaten not to reward candidates who engage in political profanity with one’s vote.
• Peter Parisi is a former editor for The Washington Times.
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