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You might have missed the British prime minister’s response to the news that Israel and Iran had launched strikes on each other in the hours that followed their ceasefire agreement on Tuesday morning. “I want the ceasefire to continue, and therefore, obviously, the sooner we get back to that, the better,” said Keir Starmer as he arrived in the Netherlands on Tuesday for the Nato summit.
You almost certainly did not miss the American president’s. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. You understand that?” Donald Trump fumed at reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, before turning away, in mic-drop fashion, to board Marine One and begin his own journey to join the other world leaders gathered in The Hague.
It was coarse, un-presidential, and highly effective. This was no slip of the tongue; this was a clear and deliberate message. “Daddy” (ahem) was angry, and he wanted the world to know it.
By breaking free of the usual constraints of polite political language, Trump was demonstrating how significant he considered the current moment. By showing some real passion and emotion, he was bringing humanity to a subject often treated as if it were a globe-sized game of chess rather than a matter of human life and death. And at a time of heightened anxiety about the outbreak of a new world war, he was signalling that America was not to be f***ed with.
Sure, you could point out that Trump does not know what the eff he is doing, either, and you would have a strong point. But in a world of so much posturing, of doing and saying the done thing, his words seemed to cut through the vapidity of it all.
You could also point out that this was hardly the first time Trump has sworn in public, and again, you would be correct. The potty-mouthed president managed to swear 1,787 times in the first 10 months of 2024 — though that is if we are to include four-letter words such as “damn” and “hell” as swear-words which, to my British ears, frankly feels a touch puritanical. In a single appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference last February, he reportedly swore 44 times. But it does seem to have been the first time Trump has used the F-word in a public address during his two terms as president; in fact, it appears to have been the first time any American president has done so.
The shock it produced, therefore, was powerful: I even saw positive responses from those users on Bluesky who tend to reflexively criticise everything the president says or does. You have to choose the right moment to drop the F-bomb; you cannot go around dropping it willy-nilly or its potency will be diminished.
“You can really assert your dominance by swearing, especially when you’ve got the license to swear but other people don’t have,” Michael Adams, professor of English language and literature at Indiana University and author of In Praise of Profanity, tells me. “It’s like his use of nicknames — he can only be addressed as Mr President, so it sets up this kind of imbalance of power.”
Other world leaders could in theory, of course, follow Trump by indulging in a good bit of expletive uttering of their own. But it is not easy to think of many who would dare. And even if they did, it might not land: part of the reason Trump can get away with it is that it doesn’t feel like a deviation from his behind-the-scenes vernacular. He doesn’t look awkward when he swears. Much as he might try to put on presidential and “elegant” airs, and despite being born into privilege, Trump is at his core a brash, wheeler-dealer, anything-goes New Yorker.
He is also a man who knows what’s good for him: swearing provides genuine relief from stress, anger and even physical pain, according to research. In one study from 2020, psychologists at Keele University asked volunteers to repeat the F-word while submerging their hands in ice-cold water, and found that pain tolerance in those participants who did so increased by 33 per cent. Those who repeated the made-up word “fouch”, meanwhile, registered no higher pain threshold. Somehow, uttering obscenities constitutes enough taboo-breaking that it triggers an aggressive fight-or-flight mode in the body, elevating the heart rate and leading to a soothing, pain-numbing effect.
All Trump really wants is the Nobel effing Peace Prize but it seems like others are just not willing to co-operate. So you can understand the man’s frustration. As Capitaine Haddock might say, Mille millions de mille sabords! Excuse my French.
jemima.kelly@ft.com
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