NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / World

President potty mouth: Donald Trump masters the cuss

By Peter Baker
New York Times·
20 May, 2019 07:00 AM7 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

President Trump's speech before the National Association of Realtors was sprinkled with profanities. Photo / Samuel Corum, The New York Times

President Trump's speech before the National Association of Realtors was sprinkled with profanities. Photo / Samuel Corum, The New York Times

In modern times, presidents have rarely been church mice afraid of a little salty language. But President Donald Trump has grown increasingly willing in recent months to say in public what most of his predecessors tried to keep behind closed doors.

His is the profanity presidency, full of four-letter denunciations of his enemies and earthy dismissals of allegations lodged against him. At rallies and in interviews, on Twitter and in formal speeches, he relishes the bad-boy language of a shock jock, just one more way of gleefully provoking the political establishment bothered by his norm-shattering ways.

In a single speech on Friday alone, he managed to throw out a "hell," an "ass" and a couple of "bullshits" for good measure. In the course of just one rally in Panama City Beach, Florida, earlier this month, he tossed out 10 "hells," three "damns" and a "crap." The audiences did not seem to mind. They cheered and whooped and applauded.

"I'd say swearing is part of his appeal," said Melissa Mohr, the author of Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, published in 2013. "It helps create the impression that he is saying what he thinks, 'telling it like it is.' We tend to believe people when they swear, because we interpret these words as a sign of strong emotions. In his case, the emotion is often powerful anger, which his supporters seem to love."

While traditionalists may deem it un-presidential and a poor example for children, Martha Joynt Kumar, a longtime scholar of presidential communication, said gritty language was part of the show put on by Trump, the onetime reality television entertainer, for his fans.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"He knows they like him to use words that lie over the edge of the traditional boundary of presidential decorum," she said. "His controversial word choices are an aspect of his role as the disruptor he promised his constituents he would be."

But critics say the vulgarity comes at a cost. "No one has debased the civil discourse in this country more than President Trump, and the president really does set the tone in the country," said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. "We see it reflected in our offices by the hateful, belligerent, obscene and violent calls that we get now that we didn't used to get."

Schiff has experienced it personally when Trump turned his name into a profanity last fall by nicknaming him "little Adam Schitt." Schiff said, "The last time that happened, the person who did that had their mouth washed out with soap by his mother."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

An unscientific survey seems to suggest that if anything, Trump is growing more comfortable with crudeness. He used the word "bullshit" in public just once in his first two years in office, according to the Factba.se database that tracks his speeches, but on four occasions in the last three months.

He has either coarsened the public discourse or reflected it, or perhaps both, depending on your view of him, but he is not alone. Society in recent years has embraced what used to be considered profanity. Even The New York Times, the so-called Gray Lady with all the news that's fit to print, found it fit to print the BS word just 14 times in the many years before Trump's inauguration, according to a Nexis search, but has used it 26 times since — not all in stories covering the president.

Discover more

World

Trump fulfils his promises on abortion, and to evangelicals

16 May 07:28 PM
World

After Obama and Trump, who will next break the mould?

19 May 05:32 PM
Business

Bank staff saw suspicious activity in Trump and Kushner accounts

19 May 08:42 PM
World

A would-be Trump aide's demands: A jet on call, weekends off and more

20 May 10:30 PM

Other presidents, of course, have engaged in common language and found a connection to everyday people. Harry S. Truman was told to "give 'em hell, Harry," to which he famously replied: "I don't give them hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it's hell." But in general, it used to be something of a mini-scandal when a president was caught cursing in public.

During a campaign event in 2000, George W. Bush was heard over a live microphone talking with his running mate, Dick Cheney, calling a Times reporter he did not particularly like a "major-league asshole." In 2004, as vice president, Cheney told a senator on the Senate floor to "go fuck yourself." His successor, Joe Biden, was overheard in 2010 using a variation of that profanity to tell Barack Obama what a big deal passage of health care legislation was.

Never has any president pushed the boundaries of language as far as Trump. He had a foul mouth long before politics, of course, but he seemed to try, however fitfully, to clean it up for a while when he set his sights on the White House. Still, he could not resist at times. At one rally during his 2016 campaign, he quoted a supporter calling a Republican rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a "pussy."

Once taking office, he tried, at least, to keep it private, but he was uninhibited when the cameras were not on. After the special counsel, Robert Mueller, was appointed, he told aides, "I'm f***ed." Speaking with lawmakers, he called African nations "shithole countries."

Yet Trump feigned shock in January when the newly elected Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan said she and her fellow House Democrats were "going to impeach the motherf***er." The president told reporters that "she dishonoured herself" by "using language like that in front of her son and whoever else was there."

Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, acknowledged a certain raw quality in Trump's discourse but dismissed its significance. "The president does use coarse language in private a lot with us," he told Jake Tapper on CNN after Tlaib's comment. "Many people do." But, he added, "I think there's more important things as to who's coarsening the language."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Any restraint Trump may have sought to exhibit early in his term seems to have eroded in recent months. In a January interview with The Times, he boasted that he had "beat the shit out of" Republican rivals in 2016. A month later, he told the Conservative Political Action Conference that his enemies were trying to take him out "with bullshit."

A few weeks later, he told a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that Democrats were peddling "ridiculous bullshit" about him. In April, he said some statements in the special counsel report were "total bullshit." Last week, he retweeted a post by his son Eric Trump saying that under Bill de Blasio, the New York mayor now running for president, "our great city has gone to shit."

By the time the president took the stage before the National Association of Realtors in Washington on Friday, he was in a feisty mood.

He recalled that a consultant tried to make work for himself by identifying environmental concerns on a property Trump wanted to develop. "I fired his ass so fast," the president recalled.

He told the Realtors that he used to refuse to pay brokers their traditional 6 per cent commission and instead gave them just 1 per cent. "I was famous for that," he said. When they booed, he quickly retreated. "Don't worry. Nobody accepted it. But I tried like hell."

Then he went after one of his favorite targets — journalists — claiming that recent reports of infighting within his national security team were made up. "There is no source," he said. "The person doesn't exist. The person's not alive. It's bullshit, OK? It's bullshit."

And with that, the television networks had to hit their bleeper again.

Written by: Peter Baker
Photographs by: Amr Alfiky and Samuel Corum

© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from World

World

'Trauma no doubt': Survivor's incredible tale after missing 12 days

12 Jul 05:11 AM
World

38 killed in deadliest day of anti-Government protests in Kenya

12 Jul 04:31 AM
World

How El Chapo's son co-operated for a reduced sentence

12 Jul 04:24 AM

From early mornings to easy living

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from World

'Trauma no doubt': Survivor's incredible tale after missing 12 days

'Trauma no doubt': Survivor's incredible tale after missing 12 days

12 Jul 05:11 AM

Her van broke down 35km off-track in dense bushland near Karroun Hill.

38 killed in deadliest day of anti-Government protests in Kenya

38 killed in deadliest day of anti-Government protests in Kenya

12 Jul 04:31 AM
How El Chapo's son co-operated for a reduced sentence

How El Chapo's son co-operated for a reduced sentence

12 Jul 04:24 AM
Trump visits Texas as flood response faces scrutiny and criticism

Trump visits Texas as flood response faces scrutiny and criticism

11 Jul 11:03 PM
Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP