‘Potty mouth’ Democrats have some new fighting words we can’t put in this headline

When Rep. Jasmine Crockett reacted to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday evening, profanity leaped effortlessly from her lips: “Somebody slap me and wake me the fuck up because I’m ready to get on with it.” Just a few days earlier, when asked of her message to Elon Musk, she told him to “Fuck off.”

Ken Martin, the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, took a more Midwestern approach: “Go to hell,” he said, adding later on X: “I said what I said.” Meanwhile, Senate Democrats launched coordinated social media videos fact checking Trump, each of them calling his claims "shit that ain't true."

In the earliest weeks of Trump’s second term, Democrats have careened from strategy to strategy to respond to him, often ineffectually. But one unifying thread as they try to invigorate their connection to the American voter has been a reach for profanity.

Democrats are cursing up a storm.

“Goddamn it, tell me who started that?” said Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a frequent purveyor of profanity.

Cursing is, of course, not new in politics. Among operatives, principals and journalists, it is a familiar way to broker instant bonhomie. Nor is it new for the Democratic Party, particularly when confronting Trump: Former DNC Chair Tom Perez frequently deployed profanity in 2017 in stump speeches, saying, for example, that Trump didn’t “give a shit about health care.”

But the breadth of swearing is unmistakable, newly fashionable among members of a party in the wilderness who are looking for shortcuts to authenticity to channel voters’ rage.

In recent days, Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona said he wanted the “intern” at the National Republican Campaign Congressional Committee who posted “racist shit” on X fired. And appraising the landscape of Trump’s America, Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii noted this week that the “stock market is down but at least everything is more expensive and services are getting shittier.”

Politics, the late Andrew Breitbart once observed, is downstream of culture. And linguistically speaking, Democrats are up a certain creek.

Trump beat them to it, using curses increasingly in his march back to the White House, though for some Democrats it is part of their native tongue.

“I mean, I was swearing before Trump, so I can't really blame it on him,” Gallego told POLITICO. “I'm gonna blame it more on being in the Marines for as long as I was.”

Now, Democrats are seeking to bottle up their impolite words and serve them up the maw of an increasingly coarse and foul-tongued populace.

“Some of it is genuine, some of it is people trying to seem faux-edgy authentic,” said Lis Smith, the Democratic adviser whose profanity is so legendary that her f-bombs played a hand in earning Amazon’s otherwise wholesome documentary on Pete Buttigieg in 2021 an “R” rating. “If the first time you’ve used a cuss word in public is reading off a script, it’s probably not authentic and not something you should do.”

It’s also become part of Democrats’ increased social media strategy. After posting their "shit that ain't true" videos on social media, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made one “breaking down the BS Trump told” during his joint address. (The top Senate Democrat didn’t go as far as saying bullshit in the video though — opting instead for “bull.”)

It is not always working. Last month, when Democrats joined federal workers at a rally of the American Federation of Government Employees to protest DOGE cuts, the profanities nearly rivaled those gathered.

“I don’t swear in public very well, but we have to fuck Trump,” said Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), adding, “Please don’t tell my children that I just did that.”

The awkward formulation — which landed less like a diss and more like a proposition — was roundly mocked.

“The key to doing it and doing it well is that you can’t overdo it and you can’t force it,” said Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic campaign veteran. “If elected officials are going to cuss, they have to mean it. If it’s authentic to who they are and how they’re feeling, voters will probably be fine with it and even relate to it. But if it’s not authentic, there’s nothing more cringeworthy.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made a video “breaking down the BS Trump told” during his joint address — but he didn’t go as far as saying bullshit in the video, opting instead for “bull.”

But there is also something more guttural in Democrats’ appeal to a deeply unsettled base.

“The truth is that we're driven by the same things most people are — like anger at honest folks being denied a fair shot – and we need to prove it by showing fight,” said Andrew Bates, who worked for the famously foul-mouthed-in private Joe Biden. “One way to do that is to call out that Trump's whole campaign was about lower costs right away – his words – but now he's raising those costs with tariffs that will fund a tax handout for the rich; and yes, that is bullshit and it shows his true colors and we should be eager to say it."

Democrats concede their party can’t just be all talk.

“In this existential moment, the Democratic base does want to see their leaders fighting back. But at the end of the day, that means successful legislative and legal maneuvers — not just the occasional f-bomb on a podcast,” said one Democratic speechwriter, granted anonymity to assess the party’s rhetoric.

This person, acknowledging “mad as hell” vibes in the party, added, “Some of it is an expression of authentic outrage at Trump smashing Democratic norms and institutions. Some of it is that — between Trump and his acolytes — the bar’s been lowered on how we expect public officials to comport themselves.”

Deeper still, some Democrats see a core moral failing in the public profanities.

“Democrats who think that vulgarity and dehumanization are reliable, appropriate or beneficial ways to advance their political interests profoundly misunderstand what has happened in our politics and what is required in this moment,” said Michael Wear, Barack Obama’s former faith outreach adviser and the founder, president and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, and author of “The Spirit of Our Politics.” “These are not tools that can be used in the service of any political goals. These things promote the very distrust, estrangement and animosity which is the fuel for the reckless, antagonistic politics Democrats — and all of us — ought to reject.”

Crockett’s f-bomb got some attention back in her district. She said at the Capitol on Thursday that people called the pastor at her church to “tattle” on her. (Though Crockett added her pastor said he approved her message: “He’s not going to be the one to try to rein me in.”)

For now, she is unrepentant. She said her answer was “real” and reflected her frustration with Trump and Musk’s actions.

“Like I have a potty mouth, especially when I'm mad,” she said. “We're working on it. We're going to pray about it.”

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