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\n

When Rep. Jasmine Crockett<\/a> reacted to President Donald Trump\u2019s joint address to Congress on Tuesday evening, profanity leaped effortlessly from her lips: \u201cSomebody slap me and wake me the fuck up because I\u2019m ready to get on with it.\u201d Just a few days earlier, when asked of her message to Elon Musk, she told him to \u201cFuck off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ken Martin, the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, took a more Midwestern approach: \u201cGo to hell,\u201d he said, adding<\/a> later on X: \u201cI said what I said.\u201d Meanwhile, Senate Democrats launched coordinated social media videos<\/a> fact checking Trump, each of them calling his claims “shit that ain’t true.”<\/p>\n

In the earliest weeks of Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Democrats are cursing up a storm.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoddamn it, tell me who started that?\u201d said Sen. John Fetterman<\/a> of Pennsylvania, a frequent purveyor of profanity.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t \u201cgive a shit about health care.\u201d<\/p>\n

$\"\u201cGoddamn$ <\/p>\n

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\u2019 rage.<\/p>\n

In recent days, Sen. Ruben Gallego<\/a> of Arizona said he wanted the \u201cintern\u201d at the National Republican Campaign Congressional Committee who posted \u201c racist shit<\/a>\u201d on X fired. And appraising the landscape of Trump\u2019s America, Sen. Brian Schatz<\/a> of Hawaii noted this week that the \u201cstock market is down but at least everything is more expensive and services are getting shittier<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Politics, the late Andrew Breitbart once observed, is downstream of culture. And linguistically speaking, Democrats are up a certain creek.<\/p>\n

Trump beat them to it, using curses increasingly in his march back<\/a> to the White House, though for some Democrats it is part of their native tongue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, I was swearing before Trump, so I can’t really blame it on him,\u201d Gallego told Blue Light News. \u201cI’m gonna blame it more on being in the Marines for as long as I was.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\u201cSome of it is genuine, some of it is people trying to seem faux-edgy authentic,\u201d said Lis Smith, the Democratic adviser whose profanity is so legendary that her f-bombs played a hand in earning Amazon\u2019s otherwise wholesome documentary on Pete Buttigieg in 2021 an \u201cR\u201d rating. \u201cIf the first time you\u2019ve used a cuss word in public is reading off a script, it\u2019s probably not authentic and not something you should do.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also become part of Democrats\u2019 increased social media strategy. After posting their “shit that ain’t true” videos on social media, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made one \u201c breaking down the BS Trump told<\/a>\u201d during his joint address. (The top Senate Democrat didn\u2019t go as far as saying bullshit in the video though \u2014 opting instead for \u201cbull.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t swear in public very well, but we have to fuck Trump,\u201d said Rep. Maxine Dexter<\/a> (D-Ore.), adding, \u201cPlease don\u2019t tell my children that I just did that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The awkward formulation \u2014 which landed less like a diss and more like a proposition \u2014 was roundly mocked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key to doing it and doing it well is that you can\u2019t overdo it and you can\u2019t force it,\u201d said Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic campaign veteran. \u201cIf elected officials are going to cuss, they have to mean it. If it\u2019s authentic to who they are and how they\u2019re feeling, voters will probably be fine with it and even relate to it. But if it\u2019s not authentic, there\u2019s nothing more cringeworthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

$\"Senate$ <\/p>\n

But there is also something more guttural in Democrats\u2019 appeal to a deeply unsettled base.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is that we’re driven by the same things most people are \u2014 like anger at honest folks being denied a fair shot \u2013 and we need to prove it by showing fight,\u201d said Andrew Bates, who worked for the famously foul-mouthed-in private Joe Biden<\/a>. \u201cOne way to do that is to call out that Trump’s whole campaign was about lower costs right away \u2013 his words \u2013 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.”<\/p>\n

Democrats concede their party can\u2019t just be all talk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 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 \u2014 not just the occasional f-bomb on a podcast,\u201d said one Democratic speechwriter, granted anonymity to assess the party\u2019s rhetoric.<\/p>\n

This person, acknowledging \u201cmad as hell\u201d vibes in the party, added, \u201cSome of it is an expression of authentic outrage at Trump smashing Democratic norms and institutions. Some of it is that \u2014 between Trump and his acolytes \u2014 the bar\u2019s been lowered on how we expect public officials to comport themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deeper still, some Democrats see a core moral failing in the public profanities.<\/p>\n

\u201cDemocrats 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,\u201d said Michael Wear, Barack Obama\u2019s former faith outreach adviser and the founder, president and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, and author of \u201c The Spirit of Our Politics<\/a>.\u201d \u201cThese 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 \u2014 and all of us \u2014 ought to reject.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crockett\u2019s 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 \u201ctattle\u201d on her. (Though Crockett added her pastor said he approved her message: \u201cHe\u2019s not going to be the one to try to reign me in.\u201d)<\/p>\n

For now, she is unrepentant. She said her answer was \u201creal\u201d and reflected her frustration with Trump and Musk\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike I have a potty mouth, especially when I’m mad,\u201d she said. \u201cWe’re working on it. We’re going to pray about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Rep. Jasmine Crockett reacted to President Donald Trump\u2019s joint address to Congress on Tuesday evening, profanity leaped effortlessly from her lips: \u201cSomebody slap me and wake me the fuck up because I\u2019m ready to get on with it.\u201d Just a few days earlier, when asked of her message to Elon Musk, she told him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}