It shouldn’t be at all surprising that on Tuesday Donald Trump became the first president to willingly say the word “fuck” in front of the media. To date, he has sprinkled his stump speeches with the occasional “bullshit” or “ass,” although he had never uttered the Queen Mother of profanities in front of microphones.
But Trump is a walking obscenity, unable to control his emotions or impulses, making American governance a byproduct of his glandular outbursts, not of law or tradition. Using a swear word is merely a symptom of his coarse imbecility, not the cause of it. It is simply further evidence that he has no respect for norms or etiquette if they restrict him in any way.
Trump uttered the f-word when expressing disgust at Israel and Iran for continuing to bomb each other after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend. Trump had taken credit for a cease-fire between the two nations, but got the “new phone, who dis” treatment from both nations when they decided to resume attacking each other. When he lashed out, Trump wasn’t mad that more people were being incinerated by warheads, he was incensed that the latest round of bombing made him look like a feckless boob. They had stolen the thing he craves the most: credit.
The turn towards profanity by politicians has been coming for a long time, so it is no surprise that Trump has now crossed the final Rubicon of expletives. Members of Congress fighting for attention have now regularly started using “fuck” when commenting to reporters or posting on social media, hoping it will make people listen. Just last year, Vice President Kamala Harris inspired a gathering of young people by saying, “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.”
Disraeli it ain’t.
When you are the president, of course, you are not competing with anyone for media attention. Every word you utter will be broadcast somewhere, so there is no need to liberally season your language with cayenne pepper.
But like a neglected child, Trump still believes he needs constant attention, which drives both his words and his actions. (Keeping his name in the news also helps him move product, from gold Trump phones to his memecoin scams.)
Yet for all the performative cussing, the truly scandalous parts of the Trump show have always been the policies that actually did something - usually something needlessly destructive - while most of us were still replaying the sound-bite. Start with his tariff binge.
Remember when Candidate Trump promised that trade wars would be “easy to win,” as if the World Trade Organization were a carnival midway and he was armed with an oversized mallet? Once in power he whacked at imported steel, aluminum, washing machines, even French cheese, slapping duties on allies and adversaries alike. Predictably, Beijing retaliated, soy prices tanked, and Midwestern farmers needed emergency bailouts just to stay afloat—subsidies that ended up dwarfing the auto bailout conservatives once decried as socialism.
That wasn’t policy; it was a one-man demolition derby in which American businesses played the role of crumple zones. And every time the stock market convulsed, Trump would tweet triumphantly about how China was paying for everything—a theory so heavily incumbent on central planning it makes Bernie Sanders look like Milton Friedman.
Then there was his crusade against inconvenient First Amendment activity. Trump didn’t merely yell at the press (every president does that); he openly fantasized about “opening up” libel laws so he could sue outlets that wrote mean things about him, threatened broadcast licenses for networks that ran unfavorable coverage, and encouraged police to rough up protesters because they “deserved it.” Now he has threatened to limit access and funding for law firms who dare challenge his edicts in court; and many of them are going along with his bribery.
Even flag-burners weren’t safe: he suggested stripping them of citizenship or throwing them in jail, apparently forgetting the minor constitutional wrinkle that the government can’t punish speech merely for being offensive, even if the speech in question involves literal flame. The foul-mouthed president who claims to “love the Constitution” respects its First Amendment about as much as he respects an unsuspecting Miss Teen USA contestant.
But perhaps the most obscene act came in the guise of “law-and-order” immigration enforcement. Early in his term, masked, armed ICE officers were dispatched to scoop up people whose only crime was overstaying a visa - fathers leaving for work, moms dropping kids off at school, grandmothers with decades-old traffic fines. Deportations of non-criminals spiked, and overnight, whole communities learned the difference between American dreams and American paperwork.
This wasn’t targeted removal of dangerous felons; it was mass eviction doubling as a reality show. Cue the inevitable photo ops, White House talking points about “protecting Americans,” and the conspicuous absence of any evidence that ejecting the neighborhood landscaper made anyone safer.
So spare me the fainting couches over Trump’s vocabulary. This is a man who, after a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband were shot to death in their homes, used the solemn event to attack Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. Trump is a man of no morals whose brain is broken beyond repair.
The four-letter word is just garnish. The real obscenity is an economic self-own that torched family farms, a censorship wish list that would make Kim Jong Un flinch, and an immigration dragnet that treated harmless long-time residents like radioactive contraband. Strip away the expletives and you’re still left with a legacy of casualties—wallets, rights, families—each sacrifice made so the former president could preen as the alpha dealmaker.
Swearing may offend delicate ears, but policies born of vanity and vengeance poison the country in ways soap can’t wash out.
ALSO:
Like many men of a certain age, I have a basement full of baseball cards I collected during my teenage years. And maybe once per decade, I will pull them out and check to see if any of them are worth any money. (We have all been told the story of the kid whose parents tossed all their cards when they moved out of the house, costing them a small fortune.)
Over the weekend, I watched an Amazon Prime documentary called The Hobby that discusses the state of the card market as of around 2022. To my surprise, there has been a resurgence in card collecting in the post-Covid era, so I thought maybe I had some cards worth a couple of bucks.
The problem is, in modern card collecting, you never know what your collectibles are worth without having your card graded by a professional rating service. A card’s value is based on whether the card is centered on the cardboard, how crisp the printed photo is, and the like. So a card with a grade of 10 could be worth hundreds of dollars while the same card with a grade of 8 could be worth maybe five bucks.
For instance, I have a 1987 Fleer Barry Bonds rookie card. If it’s graded a 10, the price guides say it’s worth $275. If it’s graded at 8, the price drops to $5. This follows the economics of scotch - you can buy a single-malt that is maybe five percent better than a standard one, but you might end up paying many multiples more for that elusive five percent.
The problem, of course, is that you have no way of knowing what your card’s grade is unless you pay to have it rated. Typically, a grading house will charge you $25 per card to give it a rating. (Or they could charge you much more if you want it graded more quickly.)
You can see the conundrum. By sending in a card to get it graded, you’re basically gambling on its quality. If I pay 25 bucks to have a card graded and it comes back with a bad grade, I just took a financial bath. But if it gets a perfect grade, I may have hit the mother lode.
As it stands, it’s not worth the gamble. So I may be a millionaire, or I may be a guy with a bunch of worthless cardboard in his basement. If the latter is the case, I will have plenty of middling scotch to dull the pain.
ALSO:
Last week, my cohost, Scot Bertram, and I finished up our 50-season jaunt through Saturday Night Live. We watched and graded every sketch, episode, and season, so now the work begins - our future podcasts will discuss where we rank all things SNL.
If you want to listen to our Season 50 summary (released just a few weeks after Season 50 ended), you can do so here - it’s free for everyone.
ALSO:
The New York Times is running a series on the greatest movies of the 2000s, and they are allowing readers to submit their own lists. Here’s mine.
FINALLY:
Hard to believe this song from Chris Staples (not to be confused with Chris Stapleton) is 10 years old, but it’s one of my favorites. It’s primarily for people in too good of a mood who want to feel sadder.
I am sure that this truth-telling will bring heaps of opprobrium on you from the glassy-eyed cult -- the usual coterie of throne-sniffers, ring-kissers, sycophants and toadies, etc. But stand strong. Became a paid member to support a fellow Wisconsinite with some political cojones ..