The F-Bomb Is the New Flag Pin
Trump cursed about Iran before breakfast, and a senator cursed at Fauci by lunch. Nobody slipped. Everybody performed.
President Donald Trump told Fox News Wednesday morning that after Iran’s surprise attack on U.S. troops in Jordan, “we are going to beat the fucking shit out of them.” Senator Bernie Moreno looked at Anthony Fauci in a Senate hearing room a few hours later and flatly asked, “Who the fuck do you think you were?”
For those playing at home, that’s TWO f-bombs from two branches of government before lunch. Nobody resigned or even apologized over this, but the video clips did huge numbers, which was the point.
There was a time, not so long ago, when this counted as news even if the f-bomb didn’t make it to air. When Dick Cheney told Pat Leahy to go fuck himself on the Senate floor in 2004, it was a legitimate scandal, covered for days, precisely because it was a slip. Cheney lost his composure and the country caught a glimpse of the real man behind the undisclosed location.
Six years later, a hot mic caught Vice President Joe Biden telling President Barack Obama that the signing of his Affordable Care Act was a “big fucking deal.” The cable news reaction to that unintended gaffe was, itself, a big fucking deal.
That was the whole value of a curse word in public life. It was the moment the pretense of civility failed.
That pretense is no longer required now that incivility is intentional. Is performative authenticity still authentic? I don’t fucking know.
Where did this recent trend start? In June 2025, Trump stood on the White House lawn and said Israel and Iran “don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” the first time I can recall a president intentionally dropping the word on live television. In October, Governor JB Pritzker told a teachers union that Trump and his cronies “can fuck all the way off,” which he graciously prefaced with “I’m sorry to be vulgar.” Yes, he apologized before he said it. Nobody apologizes in advance for losing their temper; you apologize in advance for a bit. The standing ovation he received after confirmed the bit landed.
Senator Moreno intentionally cursing at an 85-year-old Fauci while reading from prepared remarks, in a Senate committee hearing, with Laura Ingraham seated in the gallery like a proud family member at a graduation. That f-bomb sure came across as written in advance, rehearsed on the drive over, and aimed at a For You page. I’m here writing about it.
So professional political profanity appears to have changed jobs. While it used to signal when a politician lost control, it now means a politician is furious, mad as hell and can’t take it any more! It’s become the authenticity accessory of 2026, like the corn dog at the state fair, the rolled-up sleeves, the flag pin. Trump proved there was a market for it. Pritzker showed Democrats could sell it too. And now it’s reached Senate hearings broadcast live across the cable net, which is either the peak or the beginning of the end, or maybe both? The end of the Golden Age of F-Bombs is nigh.
But dropping a tactical “fuck” has the same problem as wearing a flag pin. An intentional authenticity prop only works while it’s rare. The lapel pin meant something until every politician in both parties wore one, at which point it just meant you owned a suit.
The f-bomb is following that same trajectory. Its whole power comes from scarcity. It’s the word you reach for when normal language fails, which is exactly why it reads as real. I know this from my days as a camp counselor – a strategic f-bomb got the kids’ attention.
Politicians are noticing how it reads as real and are now about to overuse it, and as a result, it doesn’t read as real; it reads as phony. So now they’ll have to swear harder, I guess? What a bunch of cunts. Wait.
The casualty is the politician who someday gets genuinely, righteously angry about something and needs the language to prove it. That register is gone. It got spent on applause lines and Fox hits. When everybody swears for the cameras, real anger and the focus-grouped kind sound the same, and the audience is right to assume the second.
The one word in American politics that used to mean a politician wasn’t performing is now only used for performing. Somewhere Pat Leahy is smiling. He got the last real one.