President Trump’s R-rated rant toward Israel and Iran after a cease-fire agreement he helped broker fell apart was a rare — but not unheard of — example of a commander in chief unleashing his inner potty mouth.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f–k they’re doing, do you understand?” a visibly frustrated Trump vented before walking to Marine One, which would take him from the White House to Joint Base Andrews to head to a NATO summit.
Trump isn’t the only president who has been known to let the expletives fly when properly motivated, but it is uncommon — and offered a window into his sour mood after having the rug pulled out from under him just hours after he triumphantly proclaimed an imminent end to hostilities between Israel and Iran.
The president famously dropped another F-bomb when delivering remarks as a candidate at the California GOP Fall Convention in 2023, saying “let’s indict the motherf–ker” in reference to former President Joe Biden, drawing cheers from the crowd.
There have been numerous instances of former presidents unknowingly swearing into a hot mic, such as then-Vice President Biden loudly whispering, “This is a big f–king deal” in the ear of former President Barack Obama as he took the podium at the signing ceremony for health care reform legislation in 2010.
When he was vying for the 2000 GOP nomination, former President George W. Bush leaned over to his veep Dick Cheney at a Labor Day rally and said, not knowing he was in a live mic, “There’s Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New York Times,” to which Cheney responded, “Oh yeah, he is, big time.”
But sometimes presidents — or vice presidents — swear with reckless abandon without caring who hears.
In 2004, Cheney himself let fly an epic F-word of his own, from the Senate floor no less, when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) pressed him about his ties to government contractor Halliburton, telling the longtime senator to “go f–k yourself,” a cursing-out he later called “the best thing I ever did” in a radio interview with comedian Dennis Miller.
The propensity for executive branch expletives is also seemingly an era-transcending, bipartisan affair.
Obama called troubled rapper Kanye West a “jackass” during a 2009 sit-down interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, in reference to his interrupting Taylor Swift on stage during that year’s MTV Video Music Awards. In 2012, Obama doubled down, calling West a jackass a second time in an interview with the Atlantic.
On the audiobook version of his 1995 autobiography “Dreams From My Father,” the future 44th president, who narrated the book, imitated a high-school friend doing lines from notoriously ribald comedian Richard Pryor.
“You know that guy ain’t s–t. Sorry-ass motherf–ker ain’t got nothing on me,” he mimicked.
In a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone during the campaign season, Obama called then-opponent Mitt Romney a “bulls–tter.”
The Obama campaign provoked a four-letter response from former President Bill Clinton in 2008 after it called his comparison to Jesse Jackson’s primary wins racially charged.
Near the end of a phone interview with WHYY about the incident, Clinton said, “I don’t think I should have to take any s–t from anybody on that, do you?” after rattling off his credentials with the black community.
John F. Kennedy lived up to his middle initial back in 1963, when news leaked the Air Force had spent $5,000 (equivalent to more than $52,500 in today’s dollars) to outfit Jackie Kennedy’s maternity suite at Otis Air Force Base, calling it “a f–k up” in an angry call with a general.
His successor, Lyndon Johnson, was well known for using profanity (not to mention consulting with cabinet members while seated on the toilet with the door wide open) and once quipped, “I do know the difference between chicken s–t and chicken salad.”
Harry Truman, who came up sleeping in hobo camps while working on the Santa Fe railroad, once called Gen. Douglas MacArthur a “dumb son of a bitch” and Richard Nixon “a shifty-eyed goddamned liar.”
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