“We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn before departing to meet with NATO allies in the Netherlands.
The president also suggested that the two countries might not have broken the ceasefire intentionally but quickly added that he planned to speak with Israeli leaders to persuade them to call off additional attacks.
Fox News, at least a little favorable to the Trump Administration, does not understand the politics of profanity, circa 2025. In its telling
"I'm not happy with Israel. You know, when I say, okay, now you have 12 hours, you don't go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them. So I'm not happy with them. I'm not happy with Iran either, but I'm really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning," Trump said.
He continued, "We basically have two countries that
have been fighting for so long and so hard that they don't know what the ****
they're doing."
A mere three months after Donald Trump first was inaugurated as President- over eight years ago- CNN noticed
Swearing has become such a part of Democratic stump speeches
that profane clips have become routine in Democratic National Committee
Chairman Tom Perez’s speeches. With children on stage behind him, Perez told an
audience in Las Vegas this weekend that Trump “doesn’t give a shit about health
care.”
Perez, President Barack Obama’s former labor secretary, made similar comments earlier this year.
“They call it a skinny budget, I call it a shitty budget,”
Perez said in Portland, Maine.
Maybe it’s a calculated move to conjure up excitement. Maybe
it’s a direct response to the President Donald Trump, who repeatedly riled up
campaign crowds with expletives incorporated into policy pronouncements.
Whatever the motivation, it appears to be a trend – and it’s not just Perez.
Perhaps not coincidentally, this propensity has reappeared in recent months. Acknowledging, "cursing, of course, is not new in American politics," Politico nonetheless recognizes
.... 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’ rage.
In recent days, Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona said he wanted the “intern” at the National Republican Campaign Congressional Committee who posted “racist shit” on X fired. And appraising the landscape of Trump’s America, Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii noted this week that the “stock market is down but at least everything is more expensive and services are getting shittier.”
Politics, the late Andrew Breitbart once observed, is downstream of culture. And linguistically speaking, Democrats are up a certain creek.
Trump beat them to it, using curses increasingly in his march back to the White House, though for some Democrats it is part of their native tongue.
“I mean, I was swearing before Trump, so I can’t really blame it on him,” Gallego told POLITICO. “I’m gonna blame it more on being in the Marines for as long as I was.”
Of course, that was at least 18 years ago, when Gallego was in his low-to-mid '20s, and he's now a worldly, mature individual. Well, at least worldly.
There is a reason Democrats do this. Donald Trump started it, and he now has won the presidency twice. Positive reinforcement.
Caitlin Legacki, described as "a Democratic campaign veteran," remarked
If elected officials are going to cuss, they have to mean it. If it's authentic to who they are and how they're feeling, voters will probably be fine with it and even relate to it. But if it's not authentic, there's nothing more cringeworthy."
Oh, give me a break. These are national party leaders or officials elected district-wide or statewide. They know precisely what they're doing or saying. It's not authentic but it works because there is nothing more important to be a successful politician than to be able to fake authenticity.
As we should expect, there is no one who can fake authenticity better than an actor. That's the point of acting- convincing viewers you're someone you're not.
And as luck would have it, we have a bad businessman and very good actor in the White House. He's someone who can believably remark "We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing."
Trump may have been channeling the zeitgeist and the fears of the public. The current conflict has only contributed to the long-held perspective of Americans that opposing parties in the Middle East always have been fighting and always will. Further, the common instinct (in this and other unpleasant matters) is to howl "they don't know what they're doing."
The cherry on top is for Trump to invoke a profanity. H.L. Mencken is said to have once quipped "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American. (Underestimate or overestimate anything long enough and you will go broke, but you know what he meant.) Here comes along an excellent actor turned politician who once said "I love the poorly educated," and this remark, complete with expletive, is stated perfectly.
Of course, Iran and Israel both know what they're doing, and they've been doing it. In May, "Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called Israel a 'cancerous tumor' that he vowed would be 'eradicated,'" a boast consistent with previous rhetoric and effort to become a nuclear power. Israel responded with a bombing attack it claimed has set Iran's program back by "two to three years" and, not incidentally, decimated the nation's air defense.
The USA then bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities, setting Tehran's goal back by anywhere from a few months to several years. In response, Iran launched a bunch of missiles at a U.S. military base in the Middle East, which (at least according to President Trump) it warned the USA of. This resulted- as apparently expected- in little damage and no lives lost. hence no American response which might have decimated the country. Quite a sensible move on the regional chessboard by a country clearly quite aware of what it was, and is, doing.
So President Trump's reaction to this lacked credibility, never a priority of his. However, it was an accurate reflection of the emotional response of most Americans and further degrades the credibility of Iran and Israel in their eyes. He will more likely be considered the consummate dealmaker if there is an agreement because "they don't know what the ( ) they're doing."
Iran and Israel know what they're doing. So, too, does Donald Trump, given that his goal is to win the Nobel Peace Prize, whatever his contribution- or lack thereof- to stability in the region.
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