Jay Nordlinger

Jay Nordlinger writes at Onward and Upward on Substack.

A short ****ing history of presidential swearing

On Tuesday, President Trump dropped a bomb – not a bunker-buster but the F-bomb. Talking to the press about Israel and Iran, he said, “We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” There is a lot to say about this statement – starting with the implied moral equivalence between the two countries. But let’s focus on the F-bomb. Has a president ever before used this word in public? Used it deliberately, in a public statement? Trump seems to have recorded a first. Plenty of presidents have had salty tongues. You may know a story about Harry and Bess Truman. It is quaint now. There are several versions of this story, but, essentially, it goes like this. Mr.

nixon swearing